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Explore poems read by the two authors in conversation with each other, then follow your own fish to unlock your own creativity, and share it with us.
Good morning. My name is Sue Boudreau, and this is Follow A Fish Poetry Podcast. I'm here with my friend Deborah Backel Schmidt, and we're going to be exploring a poem written me, we're going to then have a quick conversation about it and invite you to write a prompt related to today's theme, which is demons within. We're hoping that our conversation will ignite your curiosity and your own creativity. As we said last week, neither of us are English majors or experts on poetry.
Sue:We just love to write it and read it, think about it, toy with words, and try to express our inner world in a way that can be understood and perhaps inspire, stir to action, or just give a momentary jolt of pleasure in an ordinary day. Poetry is for everyone to read, understand, and write. It's not an ivory tower privilege. It's instead within us, the song of language, the ache of ideas and emotions that might be revealed with what you say with grace or by mistake. Today, I'm going to read, and tomorrow, Sunday, Deborah will read hers.
Sue:Our theme this week, as I said before, is demons within. Obscurity unpacked. Hands cupped around a mug of tea, dog laying next to me, winter dusk gathering outside. It's warm in this lamp lit easy chair. Under a calm exterior, I'm beating back a metallic fear, cresting one wave, readying for the next. of of what? Icy aloneness, dying disappointing, disappointed, not doing what I'd expected at starry eyed 16, adrift unnoticed this late in life, seemingly unseen. Adrift, having fallen from a high deck or balcony by drunken accident or sober suicide, a sudden gust or roll, plus a bit of clumsiness, the cruise ship moves inexorably on in a golden pool of party lights, waving, shouting, swimming, drowning for all that, the oily waves revert to black. The crew won't notice till morning, and even then. But what about his new wife, his dad who's just been diagnosed, his daughter harboring new life she's yet to disclose?
Sue:Her close colleagues at work who rely on her, clients who are helped and inspired by her, children, parents left with a tear that will never heal? What paths will not be taken? Which mountains never climbed? Which serious problems will be left unsolved? Ideas never born or patented? Incomplete masterpieces? Puzzles undone? Songs and sung, stories never told. Quiet lives are not nothing. Resist the romantic temptation to paint a careless stroke for a grand and tragic sensation. The details of each life drift by, not revealing the complexity underneath. Each of us an intricate puzzle piece, a many stranded node that if untied will fray the fabric of interconnected lives. Maybe it's better to feel honoured and protected by obscurity, to be blessed with quiet ordinary, to have more time and energy than you feel, you're more loved than you believe, you've made a difference that you don't easily see, You are, in fact, already famous to your friends and family. Time to unsubscribe to the longing for celebrity.
Deborah:This is Deborah. Sue, it's gonna be wonderful to talk to you about this poem. So many gorgeous parts I love. It's the turn to the thoughts of suicide or accidental death. It's so moving and shocking.
Deborah:And the line, the cruise ship moves inexorably on in golden pool of party lights. It's a stunning image. Then you're lying, quiet lives are not nothing that that turn toward the realization. There are three lines in a row that actually are perfect pentameter or five stresses per line, and they're beautifully written. Each of us an intricate puzzle piece, a many stranded node that, if untied, will fray the fabric of interconnected lives.
Deborah:And then maybe it's better to be blessed with quiet ordinary. Yes. And then the humor in the end of you are, in fact, already famous to your friends and family. So this comes from such a vulnerable place, especially those lines of beating back a metallic fear, cresting one wave, readying for the next. How do you allow yourself to write from such honesty?
Sue:Yeah. I was very anxious about sharing this, because it really is really close to me. And usually I write poetry that is a little bit more removed, like nature poetry, where there's a little bit of slip between who I am and what I'm seeing. But this one I wrote and shared to express what I really do feel, but also I'm sharing it because with just the very vague hope maybe this might help somebody else. It is pretty scary, you know.
Sue:If I get a bad comment on this, I could imagine I'd be a bit upset, but at the same time, I kind of love the cruise ship picture, and I quite like a little bit of melodrama as well. And I was happy that I turned it. Yeah. And that is the way it always seems to go when I write, is that by writing it out, it helps me to put things in perspective. There was a lovely quote that said something like, writing is thought made visible.
Sue:But thought and writing are so closely connected, that sometimes I don't realize what I'm thinking until I write it down, and the writing changes my perspective a little bit. I was feeling really, really awful the time when I wrote this, but by the time I finished the poem, I'm like, okay. It's fine to be obscure. This stupid celebrity thing, does that make anybody happy?
Deborah:Right. Having had that experience at least once in writing of reaching that turn, does that give you permission and confidence to launch into another exploration of feelings that are so close to you in the future?
Sue:I guess. This was kind of a low point.
Deborah:So I don't really want to have
Sue:to go any deeper than that. I do have quite a few other ones. I am always very aware of the confessional therapy poem and prose. It's kind of a danger that people can accidentally slip into, where it's just too personal, too much detail, and it's like, No, you should share this with your therapist.
Deborah:Don't give this to a family member and say, what do you think? That's often not very welcome. So I was aware of that edge.
Deborah:Yes, yes. Well, my second question was, only if you feel you can share this, would you be willing to talk about any experience or experiences that this poem arose from?
Sue:I think that everybody experiences some real downtimes where you have a confluence of professional and personal things that happen that eat away at my self confidence and my sense of being a worthwhile person.
Deborah:So poetry is something that I have to When I'm feeling really bad, I get extremely un creative, I just get frozen in place. So I'm just like sitting in a chair for a really long time. So the fact that I would be writing at all, it is something that helps me to get out of that hole. Yes, yes. And actually having friends come by, having you come by, is really lovely.
Sue:And I just recently wrote another one about the enormous joy of having people drop in, because that's something that used to happen when we were younger, and it's dropped out of the culture now to some large extent, where you have to literally text someone to ask permission to phone them, which means that you then have to, you know, actually make an actual date to get together with somebody becomes such a torture that you often don't. And I think it leads to the kind of isolation that can lead to people feeling as pushed down as I guess I was at this time.
Deborah:Yeah, yeah, Really good point. Yeah. And I'm thinking too of what Jane Hirschfield says, that writing in itself, regardless of what emerges from it, whether it becomes a poem that you enjoy, want to share with anyone else, just the act of writing writing confers agency on you at a time when you may be feeling beset and out of control. So that's so healing.
Sue:I think another piece of the puzzle is that I was relatively retired when I wrote this, and that sense of not being part of the mainstream anymore, and being a teacher, you don't always have any real sense of whether you've made a difference in the world. Right. And so trying to, this poem was a piece of reminding myself that you don't always know the effects that you've had going downstream.
Deborah:Right. The ripples are still there. May not see them there. Possibly.
Deborah:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And by the end of the poem, your thinking and feeling have come around this state of affirmation. So does the writing process often change you in such ways?
Sue:I think it kind of reminds me of my fundamental kind of optimism. I just can't stay down for too long. I just get bored with myself. And then I take a walk around the neighborhood, and I have my dog who is a great conversation starter. Have met many neighbors. Every time I walk around the neighborhood, I meet at least one person and I have a genuine conversation with. That really, really helps me to not go too deep.
Deborah:Do we have time, you think? I'd love to hear you reflect bit on how our culture pressures us to buy into these impossible aspirations for our lives that we don't measure up to in our own estimation. Well, mean, in the old days, I just watched this beautiful movie called something about the train. It was about this man who lived in the woods of the Northwest. He was a logger and he died in 1968. So he had been logging since the end of the 1800s. And the unbelievable change that we've had in such a relatively short time. He'd never talked on a telephone. And now we not only have telephones, but we have these continual reminders of what everybody else is doing. I think that social media is a little bit of the piece of that, and watching too much television is a little bit of a piece of it, because you see all these people who have these remarkable lives, and of course they're only on telly because they're interesting and unusual. And we forget about people stuck in their Barker lounges, you know, with nobody coming around anymore, and we forget that even within our neighborhood, we have houses where I've almost never seen somebody coming and going from that household. And what are their lives like behind those closed doors?
Sue:So I think that there's a mixture of fear of missing out. I think there's a sense of I'm not doing as well as people I'm seeing on the TV. There's a huge market in sort of Schadenfreude, of people looking at other people's misfortune. There's a TikTok channel for people who are hoarders. And you just, you realize after a couple of looks that you're actually just basically feeling smug about the fact that your house isn't quite that messy. Oh. And it's a really pernicious thing, and it's really isolating.
Deborah:Mhmm.
Sue:And I guess I'm My big drive in this next stage of life is about building community. And that's one of the things I'm hoping for from this podcast, that we build a bit of community around it, because poetry is quite an, you know, be quite a quiet thing to do. Right, can be. But then where's the market for it? I mean, seriously.
Sue:So, I'm hoping to encourage people to submit something, and unlike when you submit to a publication, where you get like crickets. You've spent all this time and trouble submitting what you think is your best work ever, and you hear zero from them. It's like you could throw it straight into the bin. Or you give it to somebody who says, Oh yes, I'd love to read it. And then three months later, they've never read it, or maybe they've read it and they hate it.
Deborah:And they don't know what to say to you, so they're not saying anything. Exactly!
Sue:So what we're offering is that we will respond with some specific, you know, short but specific positive feedback on your poem. Now, it doesn't mean that we think you're the next poet laureate necessarily, but it means that it's really lovely to have that during the round robin writing thing, which I refer to in our show notes, And it keeps you going. If you get a little bit of positive feedback, perhaps it'll encourage you to write some more. Yeah, I think
Deborah:we incorporate those voices into our own mind, so that when we read our own work in the future, we're hearing what other people have responded to, too. Right. Well, thank you. And I'm ready to read this so that everyone can hear this in another voice. Obscurity unpacked, Hands cupped around a mug of tea, dog lying next to me, winter dusk gathering outside.
Deborah:It's warm in the slamplit easy chair. Under a calm exterior, I'm beating back a metallic fear, cresting one wave, readying for the next. Fear of of what? Icy aloneness, dying, disappointing, disappointed, not doing what I'd expected at starry eyed 16. Adrift, unnoticed this late in life, seemingly unseen.
Deborah:Adrift, having fallen from a high deck or balcony by drunken accident or sober suicide, a sudden gust or roll, plus a bit of clumsiness. The cruise ship moves inexorably on in a golden pool of party lights, waving, shouting, swimming, drowning for all that. The oily waves revert to black. The crew won't notice till morning and even then. But what about his new wife?
Deborah:His dad who's just been diagnosed. His daughter harboring new life she's yet to disclose. Her close colleague at work who relies on her, clients who were helped and inspired by her, children, parents left with a tear that will never heal. What paths will not be taken? Which mountains never climbed?
Deborah:Which serious problems will be left unsolved, ideas never born nor patented, incomplete masterpieces, puzzles undone, songs unsung, stories never told? Quiet lives are not nothing. Resist the romantic temptation to paint a careless stroke for grand and tragic sensation. The details of each life drift by, not revealing the complexity underneath. Each of us an intricate puzzle piece, a many stranded node that, if untied, will fray the fabric of interconnected lives.
Deborah:Maybe it's better to feel honored and protected by obscurity, to be blessed with quiet ordinary, to have more time and energy than you feel. You're more loved than you believe. You've made a difference that you don't easily see. You are, in fact, already famous to your friends and family. Time to unsubscribe to the longing for celebrity.
Sue:Deborah, thank you so much for reading that. It's lovely to hear my work read by somebody else. So today's prompt is demons within. We'd love you to write something to this, and send it to curiositycatpodcastgmail dot com. We will respond with specific positive feedback, and we'll read the best ones on an upcoming podcast.
Sue:And or you can send us a voice recording of your writing as a .WAV file. Please check out the written poems with added artwork on our website at curiositycatpodcasts.com. Rate and review us, and of course, share this with your friends. We're looking forward to hearing from you. Our next podcast will be Deborah's poem Counting Poems on the Inner Demons of Writing.