An hour wtith Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

today on k pr prisons how it kind of movies i'm kate mcintyre how time moves to the latest book by karen miriam goldberg a collection of new and selected poems karen thank you so much for joining us today thank you so much for having me carrie i always love talking with you and vice versa i have you jump right in no way that one of my favorite poems in this book about the passage of time my pleasure and wraps up home called where i was half my age when i was half my age i was pregnant this house didn't exist the current year i wasn't in someone's plans yet i barely knew the wind flared lake at the center of our lives the ones that quiets enough to show how weather in debt we're never crises just puzzles to wait out of what i thought now that once you were there not yet imagined are back to sleep in their childhood

that's worn mattresses and crash lands i'm outside on an august morning when the sky turns over half were injured cicadas have to match with the local and your hand about to get us all the relief that slammed screamed like i speed just before it rained slows adult and again wait now i call to the ones now half my age looked at the book the wind reads one syllable of it that's karen mariam goldberg reading from how time moves new and selected poems karen i loved the theme of time that runs through so many of your poems talk to me about how that resonates with you well you know i consider myself a writer of hot place for ever my first comes when i was about thirteen or fourteen world that trees so the sky winter of

course the cruelty of people because that's what you write about yourself but i've come to realize that i've also been writing about time and in some ways time as almost like vertical space or place it's something that we move through and so about fifteen years ago i started bringing together homes more explicitly about time and well that you also works at greater collected works because all together the whole collection of new poems and the best of my past six books are definitely plays out how time has moved for me and poetry over decades karen how do you think they you have changed as a writer over time well that's a really good question when i began a palm have a moment where i think i don't know how to do

this and i loved that moment and i hold on to that but how it changed as i've probably gotten more verbose celeste for us at once i learn to kind of feel out what to sink into you and see what images come and trust my images much more rather than telling the reader what they've what they mean so that means more elaboration sometimes unless other times but i've changed mostly probably is the content you know i'm writing from my early sixties now instead of from my teens and gas doesn't like give us a lot of material oh doesn't that no i don't think that you well right about now topics that you feel brave enough to broach that maybe you wouldn't have done as a younger writer always written a lot of poetry about myself and once somebody complained that my poetry was to autobiographical and that led me to write a whole

portion of self portrait as a self portrait as kitchenaid mixer self portrait as a bunch of birds eccentric center so that's always been on the topics i would say it's more of that as i changed i've come on to topics that i understand from different angles or maybe he misses a better word as a team that i didn't have the experience with loss and grief but also with having a sense about my own ability to do many things and the world i didn't have as much confidence in i definitely had i am somewhere under the basement levels of self esteem background but the more i write the more that writing has helped me find what i have to say and the courage to say it so i would say it's more that life has cycled through me different

experiences and that's given me brighter abusive got to write about you turn to page eighty four and read your poem permission i think you can make her vision permission what are you waiting for a solar flare to meet neri northern lights over kansas belong to grandfather to haul his fishing line back into the water before the animal of the river cheered studio to rapid city crisscross the living room window you say slow show you their snow tying treasure just a gesture tomorrow string treasures of the world know when to grand jury to narrow permission surrender worry about unique character your children it's no wizard to

open the doors to the outside that's really inside except that was originally of your own hand nothing to lose that hesitation and meanest your cell step into failure stuff waiting for a better deal lambs heart of your bun and take your time again oh ho rage or galaxies in dallas the study gets a sleeping jaw the joy of the bumblebee swept it doors toward the honey that's been in your entry that's karen ariel goldberg reading from her poem permission it's in her new collection how time news new and selected poems can it occurs to me that that poem that encapsulates everything you just said about about growing older that at some point you stop waiting for word

for the world to say ok it's your turn yes certainly cherry mixture as a writer and i published most of my twenty four boats with small presses and i have like most writers i know probably received thousands of projections and i've really come into a place where i don't feel like i'm she's seen after the big prize anymore i write even i'm finding ways to reach people i'm continually thrilled to find the writing calling to me and so that is one of the big shift over time in a young writer or i think being an older writer seats you see i'm hoping that it will continue to save me for a long time i mean that is that as the most sincere compliments possible and will thank you so

much jay and there is a lot of freedom you know once i crossed the threshold of sixty and i'm sixty one now you know there's just a lot less luggage of certain in certain ways that i'm carrying along particularly when it comes to seeking other people's approval or is all of that all of that stuff we can talk about quite a bit and the thing with karen marion goldberg sees the former poet laureate of kansas and the author of many books her latest is time movies new and selected poems carried you've written huge roughly about your battle with breast cancer this past year you've faced some other health challenges can you talk about that and how that's worked its way into your writing yes i have breast cancer nineteen years ago they really are the most common i'm one of the most common cancer solo and close to two years ago a little

bit of blurry vision and entrenching i turned out to be an ocular melanoma which is a fancy way of saying an eye cancer one of the rarest of cancers i also have worked it's for the last two decades quite a bit with people living of serious ailments including many types of cancers and i learned a lot about resilience and how random that is who gets what and the dangers of asking why not many jazz writer it's all materials so i tell myself now that i am on a journey to new ways to be made and seeing in the world and that helps direct my righty then and amy to oregon new ways of making meaning along them subject could you read what the mostly blind eye seeing said

yes i'd be happy to yes it can see its way out of a paper bag but not more than a wavering center line on the highway there that i have asked to drive so low it sees fast to riches where once there were trees and later mostly blind eye isn't bothered by the lack of definition between soulful and turquoise wall the rectangle with green and she waited five branches of the frame of the window or the absence of the word out the exit sign instead it sees trampoline and he does that and swears it saw as a child by falling in love with the emmys and just singing the sunlight it sees right through forced forgiveness or highest sends exploded into fragments fragrance anthony too early it sees nothing of the future of the smart enough

not to be less perturbed by the us or by the presence of loners but you're an interim basis that her eyes but not necessarily better is like now when it sees the green panorama of cricket song turning into lightning bugs the smell of seabird between thousand and four finger the heavy cherry but he made people tell us about the terrain and the tumbling aren't star of song we've seen in the tree tops at the sky for a long life that's karen miriam goldberg reading from her poem what the mostly blind eye sees karen that is that is lovely oh thank you so much take that home a well it just kind of came out from having to describe for doctors and i'm also trying to describe her friends and family what it

means to have an eye that's legally blind but still sees some there were other things and i have to say that back in the before time when we picked up our chosen galleries i developed a trick of looking at a painting with bow ties that covering my left eye of my batters seeing eye and see in a whole different painting with light mostly blind eye oh my gosh that's really using and using that experience as as an unexpected gift yes thank you so much worse karen and carrie us in what way do you use your experience with losing that i cite in in that i had to use that as a metaphor when you write in some ways i have i realized that i've actually been writing quite a bit about sights and seeing as well as thoughts and thinking so

it comes through my writing in all kinds of ways especially since poetry tends to be so image based and although it work as a poet to invoke all the census you know our sense of smell touch taste it sound i also rely quite a bit on the precise images and sometimes less precise images if i'm looking out at them just through when i are very different i see a lot more light and a lot less definition and so that kind of gives me new inroads into poetry it occurs to me and one of your other poems that i'm not going to have you read bedtime but one of the lines that really stuck out with me it was the good eye has to fly solo yes i've come to realize how much our bodies are just evolution early on developed see you compensate for what religious you know my

left eye has re calibrated probably a hundred times as my right eye lost sight and went through radiation treatments and groove cataract have had cataracts removed and so on and in our bodies are always recalibrating to help us in some way possible karin because we're talking about the passage of time and how how that's reflected in your poetry i'm curious if they're hard differences that you notice in how you've written about this can serve verses your breast cancer almost twenty years ago i read about my breast cancer in two different genres i read a memoir called the sky begins at your e mail server at a collection of poetry called reading the body and i was aiming toward those as i went and also i expected breast cancer to be on my dance card it was very prevalent in my family and as an ashkenazi jew in

my in my dna i was more pre disposed foreign provider or worse but this cancer took me quite a bit by surprise and i'm still exploring how best to write about it i have a pup kind of memoir started and i have a lot more poetry about it but it's also in many ways a slower bird when it comes to what does this mean and how is this changing me so i still feel very very much and process but i can say right off the bat that i'm in touch with a lot more uncertainty at all in even though in breast cancer and i went through a pretty extensive treatment for it i had a lot of fear and i have a lot of moments of uncertainty the combination of a rare and strange cancer and growing older and realizing how world changing in eighteenth and so anyways has opened those doors wider

to this jury and who knows what will happen next a man i visited karen miriam goldberg her latest collection of poems is how time moves at this point almost five thousand kansans have died and half a million americans have died of covert nineteen one of them with singer songwriter john prine can't have you read your poem the night john prine died absolutely deny john prine guy that the full moon rose over the pandemic singing through the tree alone when their own while we listen to all children grown old but always looking for something to hold on to even angels of the old rivers of our hearts charities grown wild or they're holding that's forcing new channels like the holiest prone to

do especially when everything changes what is there to do but stand here willing peaceful waters to calm us sometime in the future as it that's where paradise lay but john prine new there's a hole in the world we can only relents it now while time changes us where true in to see many years of this lie tell a sense of something good radio as leaves beneath the tree of forgiveness lines come on home come unfold after night john prine died by karen aaron goldberg it's one of many poems and how time moves karen you wrote a number of poems about the covert nineteen pandemic in what way has this terrible pandemic found its way into your writing and how his writing helped you process what's going on in the world right now

well like many people i know who create poets and musicians artists and so what i found during the first few months of the pandemic i was just frozen i didn't quite believe it at the same time this was going to help us and i realized how can i go out time moves without writing about pandemic time so with my publisher the wonderful tracy million simmons who runs that a lower price i made a decision to only section of poetry meets you lucy poetry as a way to try to capture and better understand pandemic time that means that sense i don't know exactly what data is that it feels like a pro has lasted for twenty two

years and here we are a year later could you read your poem a year from now which as it turns out this is a year from now absolutely i mean your were the pandemic spread like a hurricane scouring the closed only weakening once it takes on so much land july and loses its taste for us will the un imagined make itself as sullivan visible as the slats at this wooden parent's lap as paint peeling and now the recipe at the meeting where because you're a vaccine a long pause actually cut all the tired of lost children and old men never sick a day in their lives the masked gunmen masked less the believers and to nine years in the ground and in a sturdy basket of the story

we tell that pat's well next summer's heat still reminds us well chlorine and watermelon seeds that doesn't stop the mosquitoes when that draws him a small black headed black and white heard screeching its readiness to bill eats well you still be here and new so i have to tell you when i read that poem i've taken back to where i was when i drafted i went three times to the writer's colony at jerry holland you rica springs to work on this poem and it's extremely cold let's say you know i stay in a tidy suite of rooms with hardly any human contact and i was sitting on a porch two thirds of the way up a mountain in arkansas and just looking ahead to the future and i haven't read that poem for a while when i read it now i just think oh how much of this has come to pass

and how sad and how many of us will carry the sadness for ever karen how do you think the pandemic has changed you as a writer you know cyrus going through cancer or any serious illness is like being in me i have a storm of her personal pandemic life as you know it changes the story you thought you were living turns out just to be the storm or you've got your living and there's something else going on and when i first started doing writing workshops again with the turning point writers group facilitator turning point to a wonderful organization in kansas city to labor is all history of programming for people living a serious illness everybody was just kind of shrugging in a way you know we were terrified and upset about the pandemic but most of these people have learned resilience from the

inside out for living with a serious illness and it was really illuminating for me that now on a larger global level the story we thought we were living turns out not to be the story there was something else going on and of course there's and what's that line there's stories turtles all the way down and those torture or she would say her stories all the way down when it comes to explaining what it means to be alive and are on a collective understanding in history and visit karin marion goldberg sees the author of how time moves new and selected poems i have one more pandemic poem i would like you to read and that's a pandemic travel and this one was actually written about driving to unfurl arkansas continue to work on the book masking my right hand sanitizer in my lab i

ventured through the quick shop door is somewhere in rural missouri where nobody believes in pandemics all the conspiracies brent to perhaps so many scenarios for danger and damage lungs your teammate at a gas station gas lighting me where my gas lighting in it i strap on my car mass what still remains parading across where my lips would be and in the bathroom or wash in and set antiseptic one small alley near the ceiling vanishes into the vanishing point i can slowly to a team as i wash open majority quick dear it back to the same house the subway cars for etsy the raindrops change for long scrolls to large empty eyes the windshield wipers can keep our word just like me chanticleer the weather by and going toward the

blank space where have i been traveling all these years my hands on them that's pandemic traveled by karen miriam goldberg it's part of how time news new and selected poems karen i think that time will years from now still be able to take us back to what it feels like traveling being on the road being at any gas station during this covert nineteen pandemic and i also want to note that this was somewhat early in the point and i think that what's in here and then when the first are asking here went on assuming that some of those rural communities russians did as they've unfortunately experience this i don't single out world communities in missouri we all have been struggling to find what's true here understood and time moves contains many new poem spade it also revisit some of your

old friends how they feel regret having them after all these years it actually felt really err e i t march in a t and was into catalina lee when i went through some of these books but i was surprised by how a lot of the older homes health law of course there were also some occasional once i realized oh this one will not come forward to a collective working on it karen i picked a poem that i'd like you to go out on if you could turn to page one ninety three its surrender surrender your house a chance which was never yours to be anywhere and listen carefully for stillness and science release the nurses and crack open the windows rather the cats and dogs babies and grandmothers go underground

to hear your pulse and your attention here as the house straddles hold on city ambience your hands a messenger of assurance your eyes and the dark knight into other eisenberg tour when you can't hear or see any more free why not share all the majority of the wind armed russian the ground the heart of your life where you're just grateful grateful grateful and you know as i read this over i thought oh i was also speaks at least to me and some of my experience in this pandemic breathing in the dark with others waiting for when we can go out again this just feels like coming up after a after a tornado scare but also it's such an incredible metaphor for for weathering the storms of life period yes i didn't realize until i read that again tear up wow

that was a home from chasing whether that's awesome and how time lows and they're chasing weather's my book of wild weather poetry speak to her from photographs by stephen gorgeous photographs by stephen like kansas weather can we pick the one other poem that i'd like you to share with us and that's i don't know how to love a broken day i don't have a lot of broken today is actually a form called a bell and now which is one of those mind bending french poetic forms and it's the first the one ally britain i think that works and other baylor now other people might know is the waking by the edge or rocky which begins with the line i wait to sleep and take my waking slow which i also use i don't know

i don't know have a lot of the broken day can damage losses loom die in return stone begins to sway when she's that bands and chill wind has its way in storms that clean the world before it turns into what helps me luck the brooklyn da the blue i shakes and shows me how to stay while black eyed seasons there's red light and learn everything like stone begins to sway no wonder when i'm scared i'm prone to pray for ground up my thinking hard glitter i don't know how to love the broken day or a story that has so much to say a batson blossoms stars and birds airborne time like stone that slowly learns to sway the day my cultures through us raid by ray like all that blooms and diets while the world burns

i don't know how a lot of broken terry what i thought was god begins to sway that's karen mariam goldberg reading i don't know how to love the broken day it's one of many poems in her collection how time moves new and selected poems karen thank you so much for visiting with us today thank you so much for having me can thank you for leading us on a journey into some other wild worlds that poetry can opener happy poetry month karen happy poetry month tj and kate mcintyre we'll continue our celebration of national poetry month here and keep your prisons right after this