Today we’re bringing you the recording from Slow Take, our live event in Nashville this past April, featuring Major Jackson in conversation with Jad Abumrad and special guest poets Kate Daniels, Mark Jarman, Ciona Rouse and Didi Jackson, as well as singer-songwriter Tia Sillers.

Our hosts and guests employed the attention of The Slowdown to explore the daily noise we interact with -- how sharing poetry, stories, and reflection can shape our experience of the everyday. How do we collage our own pasts and our presents, alongside the many voices that we engage with?

This event was produced in collaboration with The Porch and was recorded live at Analog at Hutton Hotel. The full video is available on The Slowdown’s YouTube channel.

Transcript

Myka: Hello, hello. Welcome. If you want to... take your seats… Welcome to Analog at the Hutton Hotel. My name is Myka Kielbon. I'm the lead producer of The Slowdown, your daily poetry companion podcast from American Public Media. And welcome to Slow Take.

So we are here with our amazing friends at The Porch, which is a local literary arts organization here in Nashville. Let's hear it for The Porch.

I'm sure that their amazing work is why so many of you are here today or maybe hearing Major tell you on promos for The Slowdown that we're gonna be here in Nashville. And we're really here tonight to celebrate the Nashville literary community. We have amazing local poets. And what we're here tonight to do is really reflect on the mission of The Slowdown and the mission of The Porch to bring poetry and writing and reflection and the arts into our daily lives.

The Slowdown has been a part of your life since 2018, for over 1300 episodes, and those have been some pretty cacophonous years. I think a lot has happened for all of us. And I’m just grateful to share this space together and talk about poetry. Do some poems. That's our job here. Um, alright, so I have some local poets for you tonight.

Mark Jarman, Kate Daniels, Ciona Rouse, Didi Jackson. Also have a local musician. I don't know if y'all knew this. We're gonna have some music tonight from the amazing Tia Sillers. And along with our hosts, we're gonna join forces in an expansive conversation about the daily noise we interact with. How conversation and sharing poetry, stories, and reflection shapes our experience of the everyday.

So, it is my honor and pleasure to introduce your hosts for the evening. First, Jad Abumrad. Jad Abumrad makes audio stories and is a musician. His shows, RadioLab, More Perfect, Dolly Parton's America, Unerased, and The Vanishing of Harry Pace have been downloaded over a billion times. I will say Dolly Parton's America like, changed my life as a podcast producer. Gotta be honest. Jad is a recipient of three Peabody Awards, and in 2011 was named a MacArthur fellow. He's currently a distinguished professor of research at Vanderbilt University. You'll hear that university name a lot tonight. He's working on a new audio project that will debut in late 2025. He also recently announced new work as a co-creator, co-librettist and co-composer of the innovative choral theater piece, "Port(al)".

Our other host for the evening is the poet Major Jackson. Major Jackson is the host of The Slowdown and the author of six books of poetry, Most recently Razzle Dazzle: New and Selected Poems. Jackson is a recipient of fellowships from Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets.

He's the Gertrude Conway Vanderbilt chair in the humanities at Vanderbilt University. He also serves as the poetry editor of the Harvard Review and is the inaugural recipient of Patricia Cannon Willis Prize from Yale Library. And really so excited tonight to be in Nashville to celebrate Major's time on the show.

It's been over two years, over 443 episodes. I'm gonna say over 'cause I've asked you to read more copy than that. Um, without further ado, thank you so much for being here. And here's Major Jackson and Jad Abumrad for SlowTake.

Major: Thank you Myka. Call her Myka “Poem Time” Kielbon. Um, so thank you all for being here. It is National Poetry Month, but I could not think of, um, a better co-host to join me, uh, this evening than Jad. I think Jad's work as a storyteller, um, someone who engages all aspects of our cultural and political lives done so artfully with sound is the person that I thought of whenever, um, I would go into the studio with, uh, Myka.

Um, it would be a great honor for The Slowdown to have the same kind of impact as your work has done – with poetry. Who knew? Um, so thank you for joining me this evening. Not only is it, uh, an occasion marking, um, a great art form – some will argue the best literary art form ever in the history of mankind, poetry. Um, but also it's here in Nashville.

And for Didi and I to have arrived, um, when we arrived in this particular community that was rich with a history, um, that went beyond, uh, music. And I'm happy we're going to feature, um, a musician who's also a neighbor. But it seems like I grew over the past two and a half years with, uh, Myka as my teacher and with my colleagues at Vanderbilt University, with the poets, with, um, my friends at The Porch, um, who have hosted events like this that have truly enriched my life.

And I also want to say, um, I said I would never move to a city that did not have a book festival. Um, the Southern Festival for the Books is, has been, um, an amazing locus of activity and a window into, uh, the amount of writers that are just either a state away or multiple states away. But this is a destination for writers. So we are here to celebrate that, uh, as well.

Jad: Oh, and I just to, I just wanna say I'm really excited to be here with you, Major, to celebrate you. Uh, because, uh, I was just looking at the number of episodes that you've created for The Slowdown over the last seven years, and I think it's 1300? Is that, is that?

Major: There's 1300 total. Podcast episodes and I've contributed 443 of them.

Jad: That is astounding.

Major: Yeah. Thank you.

Jad: Astounding. I would, I would love to take this moment to mark your tenure, uh, by asking you some questions, to reflect. 'Cause I know we're gonna have some other poets here who are gonna read their work. But maybe I could, we could focus on you for a moment. Um, what, how exhausted are you?

Major: Oh, man. Um, well, I've since bought a pullout couch in my office. Uh, it seems like I was writing quite a bit. Those 443 episodes, however, were so, um. To encounter that many poems has totally enriched my soul and also strained my eyes, uh, in a good way, I think. Um, but what drove me was the amount of space that I felt like I was giving, giving to, uh, emergent poets, established poets, poets who are part of our canon, but maybe forgotten. Um, I didn't mind, I didn't mind losing sleep in the interest of our larger literary culture.

Jad: Gotcha.

Major: Yeah.

Jad: I, I'm curious, the, the very first time we talked about poetry, you and I, which was when I was first joining the Vanderbilt community, so this would've been 2022. You showed me this, um, tremendous archive that you have of, uh, I don't know where you've got like a, you were saying it was like estate sales and garage sales. Uh, cassettes full of, uh, the voices of Walt Whitman, T.S. Elliot. All of these people like incredible, like just this library. Um, I'm curious to know who are the voices that filled you as a poet and that made you wanna do this?

Major: Yeah. Uh, I, my audio collection probably is mainly cassette tapes and, uh, CDs. So the technology, I don't listen to them as frequently as I used to. But there was a recording that was put out in the late eighties, early nineties called A Century of Recorded Voices. And it was a well curated collection of American poets for whom the source was in the Library of Congress. So you had people like Edna St. Vincent Millay, all the way to Li-Young Lee.

Before I would, I wanna say listening to those particular poets was ultimately my education. But there was definitely some poets for whom, like Frost reading um, Birches, for example, is in my ear. And poor Myka has had to bear with me doing imitations of Robert Lowell. “Nautilus Island's hermit / heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage,” you know, I would, I would…

Jad: No, keep going, keep going.

Major: I would break out, you know. Um, we, we have in our lives a poet named, uh, Yusef Komunyakaa, who also has a very distinguished speaking voice. I wanna say it was these, listening to those poets that really attuned my ear, uh, as a poet. I've read them, but listening to them, it gets in your body.

Jad: Yeah. And, and, and for the, for how do you make the selections that went into those 400 episodes? I mean, because do you, do you start with a set of criteria? I want poems that do A, B, and C? Or, because it's daily, is it sort of just embrace everything?

Major: It's, it's the very democratic, um. That's the first thing is that I, I wanted, wanted the show to be as inclusive of all voices that constitutes our polis. And that meant, yes, I will, I will definitely find poems in journals, very esteemed journals, but I'm as interested in the online zine. So there were a few of those that I subscribed to that do a poem a day.

Myka was a great source. Um, friends would be on the lookout. Uh, finding poems wasn't difficult. You know, there would be publishers that also would send you galleys of forthcoming books. Um, what was difficult was finding the story to match the poem. And in that particular sense, one of the things that Myka and I talked about early on was being careful – and the other producers – being careful of not turning the podcast into a classroom, but a, a space where we might encounter, through the poems and maybe through the anecdotes, some of the very real, um, humane situations that we are likely to, um, you know. It’s, it’s more like poetry as, as an applied art rather than poetry as something that's studied in, in the halls of academia.

Jad: Yeah. Yeah. And, um, I'm curious, like why. Hmm. What do I wanna ask you? I'm thinking of the last episode where you signed off. Where, where you read, it wasn't actually you reading it was your poem. But just, you heard dozens of people reading your poem, “Why I Write Poetry,” which is, it's, it's, it's a hilarious poem. I love it.

But, but you said something on the way in that was struck with me. You said you love how poetry forces us to adjust to each other. I think that was the phrase. I'm wondering if you can expand on that.

Major: Yeah. I, I've been thinking lately about this moment right here: we're about to hear four, um, poets tonight. And listening to each other is, it, it takes effort sometimes. It's not an effortless thing. We're thinking about the laundry that's left in, we're thinking about quite possibly dinner. Um, maybe thinking about work. To concentrate, to, to invite someone to, uh, to listen to your words. It's a, it’s a gift to both read before them, but it's also a gift to listen.

So we have to make room. We have to make room mentally. We have to make room emotionally. We have to open ourselves up to, uh, a poem. The, the podcast, I think, has been ritualized among thousands of listeners. Either they listen in the morning or the midday or as part of their, their evening. Um, everyonethat I've talked to, um, the poem eventually comes back to them. Like you open up space for the words of others, but eventually the poem is you and the poem and the, and the words that are left there.

Um, so thank you for that, for that question. And also thank you for, uh, listening to the podcast. And thank you all for listening, actually. I think we're going to bring up some poets. How's that?

Jad: Sounds good.

Major: Yeah, let's hear some poems. Major Jackson is the host – I'm joking.

Mark Jarman's most recent collection of poetry is Zeno's Eternity from Paul Dry Books in 2023. He has also published three books of essays about poetry: The Secret of Poetry, Body and Soul: Essays on Poetry, and Dailiness. His honors include the Lenoir Marshall Prize, the Poets Prize, the Balcones Poetry Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is Centennial Professor of English Emeritus at Vanderbilt University, where he taught from 1983 to 2020 when he retired.

Kate Daniels received her MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts. She's the author of six collections of poetry and the editor of one collective volume. Her honors include a Bunting Fellowship at Harvard, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Best American Poetry selections, Pushkar Prize and Election to the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

Her poems have been anthologized in more than 75 volumes and have appeared individually in journals such as American Poetry Review, The Southern Review, Oxford American and Plowshares. She's the Edwood Mims professor of English Emeritus at Vanderbilt, and Affiliate Faculty member in Medicine, Health and Society. She teaches writing at the Baltimore Washington Center for Psychoanalysis and conducts community workshops on recovery for people whose lives have been affected by addiction.

Please welcome Mark and Kate.

Thank you both for joining us. You both have had poems featured on The Slowdown, but we're gonna hear two poems from you. We'll start with Mark.

Mark: Yes. Poetry. The Greatest Art. This is just a poem about, um, catching a young student before she fell on an icy path by Vanderbilt. It's a winter poem. So here's this young student. She's walking along. Here's Professor Jarman, trudging along, and he sees that she's gonna hit a patch of ice. This is called

She Twirled Along the Brick Wall, Fingertips

She twirled along the brick wall, fingertips

clawing at mortar to take hold

and skittering over the wall face like a keyboard,

frantic, muted.

And I as usual was just trudging along,

head down — on ice this time — more of a mincing

than true trudging, though my soul trudged,

when I caught her.

Slim, young, padded in pleated fleece,

and taller than I as I helped her stand,

she pulled an earplug out beneath her knit cap,

said, “Ouch.”

And said it like a quiet bid for privacy.

Paternal, winded, I wanted an assurance.

And she assured me with a thanks that meant,

“Just let me cry.”

Major: Kate.

Kate: I'm gonna, Mark and I are narrative poets, old time narrative poets. We like to tell stories. I have to talk before I tell my poem, but I won't take up my time. So, uh, my daughter, my daughter is over there and, uh, I wrote a poem for her when she was, uh, an infant, uh, called Love Pig,which was a nickname we had for her because she was such a juicy, sort of lickable, kissable infant and uh, she used to come to my readings and stand up and crow in the, in the audience, I'm the Love Pig!

She stopped that when she was about 12 or 13. She's probably not gonna do that tonight, but you may have heard crowing over there on the side while Jad and and Major were talking. My granddaughter Lyra, who was the current generation of love pigs, who was at her very first poetry reading. And so I am going to read in her honor and in honor of her parents, my son Gus, and her, her mother, my daughter-in-law, Sarah Love Pig. Because Lyra is also a juicy, kissable, lickable infant.

Oh, I wrote this poem originally for C.D. Wright. Some of you will know who she was, an absolutely wonderful poet of Mark’s and my generation, uh, who came to stay with me in Durham when my daughter Janey, was an infant. And she's the one who sort of called her love pig. Um, she slept in the same room with her and used to talk about what that wonderful smell that infants have, as well as the wonderful tactile feel of them. So this is…

Love Pig

You too will love her thighs, the fat sweatiness of them.

The toe curling odor, the bracelets, the biscuits of

baby flesh washed in urine and milk.

The neck is next best.

Fat too, bejeweled with dried spit, old food,

gray gyres of tears and sweat.

If you like, I will let you borrow her for a while

and you can burrow down deep

in her sweet and her sourness,

her soft and her softer.

Belly up to the buffet of her body

and grow corpulent like us

guzzling sweet drafts of baby breath,

gobbling mouthfuls of sticky tender cheek

gorging ourselves on our own

Baby girl.

Jad: I, I'm curious about how a poem starts in you. Um, I, I was talking to a choreographer recently who talked about how when she walks into a space, it creates an energy loop. Like, the space has energy in it. Then she has to complete it by making something happen in the space. What creates the energy loop for a poem?

Mark: It has to do with connection. And in the poem I read you, it is a connection that would otherwise be prohibited. Professor Jarman does not go grabbing young students – unless they need his help. And that was the moment when on reflection, I thought, isn't that interesting? I caught her. I kept her from falling and hurting herself further.

And I felt really paternal at that point. I mean, we were across the street from Vanderbilt Emergency. I could have taken her there. But she was fine. As she said, just let me cry. And it was a charged moment if you think about relationships between professors and their students and that crossing that space, what is permitted, what is not.

And so I realized that's what I need to do. And I waited to make sure that she was fine. And that, now, how did it become a poem? It was, that happened two or three years before I wrote the poem. It was just that moment, uh, stayed with me and I found a way. I was working in a certain kind of form, form. The poem is in quatrains. It kind of decreases as it goes down the page. It has a, had a shape that will allow me to tell the story. Dramatize the moment.

Major: Mark, did you finish it in one sitting?

Mark: Uh, no. I never finished anything in one sitting. I wish! I, I commenced it in one sitting, and I had thought about it for a while. It was there. It was something interesting to think about. Um, the first draft… Yeah, maybe that was one sitting. As I recall it took a while. But that's something I learned to do when I started writing poetry as a teenager. It takes a while. Be patient.

Major: Was it that piece of dialogue that you lived with?

Mark: Yes.

Major: Just let me cry.

Mark: Well, it was the “Ouch.”

Kate: The “Ouch.”

Jad: Yeah.

Mark: This, it was this motion that she made, which I couldn't. She pulled her earplug out of her ear and said, “Ouch.” She didn't say, “just let me cry.” That was my interpretation. This was like, “Ouch.” Now you can go. Yeah. Just let me cry.

Major:. Kate, did you write yours in one sitting?

Kate: You know, I think I did. I was writing a whole bunch of poems. I was overwhelmed in early motherhood when all my kids were little. And um, I remember my, but to answer your question first, mine always starts with the kind of, a psychological entry into something like, what is the psychology of this moment? And I re-, I grew up in the South, even though my mom was English. And there was this phrase, you know, she or he's so sweet, you could eat 'em with a spoon. And that's what I felt like about my daughter. And I feel like that about my granddaughter, who I think has just been spirited out of the room 'cause she's so vocal. Um, I, she's, they're so sweet. You just wanna eat 'em.

Jad: Yeah.

Kate: And so then I started thinking about cannibalism.

Jad: It’s a strange instinct, right?

Kate: And think, what the hell was that all about? And that, that was what led me into that.

Jad: I once, uh, tried to do a story about why do we want to bite cute things.

Kate: Yes. Yeah.

Jad: No one can really explain.

Major: I don't think we’ve covered cannibalism on The Slowdown yet. No, we haven't. Yeah. Um, you both are longtime teachers and as teachers, I'm curious about, uh, the precision of poetry.

Most people think, uh, one sitting and you're done. But clearly you come back and you rework the poems. Maybe you can use those poems as an example – or not. But how do you get to precision and where's the artfulness in poetry?

Mark: Um, when I have taught poetry writing, uh, I always teach it as a process of vision and revision, right? Uh, mainly revision. And for me, um, writing has always been a process of revision. So when you asked me: Did you write that poem in one sitting? I had it formed, perhaps, in my mind, but it took many, many drafts. And being willing to do that – my advice to any young writers – being willing to be patient and to wait, um, not that this should sound too mystical, but I want it to, the poem will tell you when it's done. It's like a child leaving home. And you have to let it go.

Jad: Does it, that's interesting. Does it tell you, just you? Or does it tell you through other people? Do, do you know what I'm asking?

Mark: I know exactly what you're asking, but I, that's an excellent question. Yes. I have some friends. I always show my work to, uh, who are, uh, honest and, and, and even brutal. Uh, I just had an exchange with one of them, my oldest friend who's a poet. And I showed him a group of poems and he said, these two, they're stinkers, get rid of them. But he said, but this one begins in like, the second stanza.

So, you know, poets talking to each other where you understand what it means. It’s that you, you, you've written something that you need to throw away or put away. But you also have something that you need to work on. It's not done. But you, it will, it will be clearer to you if you were, will remove part of it in front of you.

Kate: Um, and your, your initial question about teaching. So I always answer that as I, I always approach that and still do, 'cause I'm still doing a little bit of teaching as we're doing something really counter-cultural. I mean, frankly, it's one of the things that appealed to me about The Slowdown was that it, it, it articulated my approach to poetry. It's slow, it's mindful, and if you're not on for that, this is not gonna be your game. You're not gonna be interested in it.

And so I always taught it that way, that we are in this sort of like little cult and we do this weird thing with words in our heads that most people don't do. Everything is too intense for us and we, we sort of manage it through these linguistic expressions. So that was kind of always, 'cause that's what it was like for me. I, I, poetry, I started, was one of those geeks who started writing before I could write and read, I would dictate to my mom. She, and she would write 'em down, you know. It like, saved my shit, you know? That's how I like, made it through life. And um, and that's how I teach it.

Because a lot of times, particularly 'cause Mark and I both spent our careers in academia teaching essentially adults. And a lot of times, interestingly, these young people who come into these undergraduate workshops, they're embarrassed to be writing poetry. So you have to figure out a way to make it okay for them. So I sort of said, we're in this weird cult and what we're all in here together and it’s really cool.

Jad: That's interesting that, uh, it, it, I suddenly was like, oh my God, podcasting is the same way. You almost have to convince people that it's a thing you can take seriously.

Kate: Yeah.

Jad: That you're allowed to actually work at hard. 'cause everyone's like, oh, I'll just make a podcast. Everybody has a podcast. You know? So I wonder, do you, do you have to convince people that poetry is a thing that you can actually spend your life doing? Not just, uh, not just as a vocation, but actually getting better at as a craft?

Mark: The first thing I say to my students, said to my college students, when they come into a creative writing class to write poetry, I said, We're gonna write poetry. This is the best thing in the world. And it's hard, and it's gonna take you a long time, and you're gonna be frustrated and we're gonna find joy in that.

Kate: Yep.

Jad: Amen.

Kate: Yeah. Amen.

Major: It reminds me of a quote from Czesław Miłosz, talking about poetry and thinking about the, the labor of it. He says it's enough labor for a human life. And how I interpret that, like with any art, is that you are, you are a lifelong student of that particular art. And around that emerges um, a life well lived, a life of meditation, one in which you are attentive to language. Do you have similar quotes that you share with students?

Kate: Yes.

Major: Okay.

Kate: Stanley Kunitz was my teacher, uh, and, uh, and my mentor in graduate school. “What is the use of poetry if it doesn't say something meaningful about the human experience?”

Major: I can live with that.

Kate: Yeah.

Jad: Yeah. That's cool. So does, what does that say about those poems that you can't understand? Like just there's a certain kind of, you, you mentioned narrative poetry. So I, I'm the, I'm the like, non-poet on the stage, so please forgive what I'm about to ask. Um.

Major: We're gonna induct you in after.

Jad: Yeah. But uh, there's the narrative poetry as you, as you, as you mentioned. But then there's the other kind that is so, layers upon, layers of abstraction that you're just, it's more like music or it's more like word salad or something. Did what about, how does that, how does that form comport with the quote that you just read?

Kate: Well that, like, you know, gave me like a, a good sort of launchpad. Because I mean, I would say there's two sort of main modes, narrative and lyric. But what you're talking about is something different.

What we used to call, I don't know what it's called now, but in our generation we called experimental poetry and it was linguistically interesting, but did not stab me in the heart, which is what I need a poem to do, you know? Um, so it, it made it okay for me to not feel, um, uncool because I wasn't writing those kinds of poems you're talking about. That's what it did for me.

Mark: I'm reaching the back of my mind, um, for, uh, a pithy expression of what poetry is. I think I already said, uh, this is, I believe, Elizabeth Bishop: vision and revision. Um, and I know a lot of poetry by heart, and right now I've forgotten all of it. Um, this is a, a line at the end of a poem by Robert Frost that, uh, called “For Once, Then, Something.” Uh, he's looking down at a well, and he sees something, he knows he actually sees a thing, and at the end he says, is it “Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then something.”

And for me, that is the heart of a poem. You have got something, it's real. And what you're trying to do in the poem is provide the dimensions of that real thing that you can only perhaps picture. You're not even sure it's real, but it's something. And that's a powerful word. Uh, something, 'cause it's not nothing.

Major: Yeah. Thank you Kate. Thank you Mark, for joining us on stage and for your poems and teachings. Now, Myka, would you come up on stage to introduce our next guest?

Myka: Well, thank you again to Kate and Mark for that amazing conversation. And I'm gonna let you two, Major and Jad, go get a drink. You'll have a second.

I’d love to introduce our next guest. We're gonna link together the lyric and the music. I'd like to bring to the stage Tia Sillers. Tia Sillers is a Grammy award-winning songwriter with countless successful singles, including Lee Ann Womack’s “I Hope You Dance,” The Chicks’ “There's Your Trouble,” and Kenny Wayne Shepherd’s “Blue on Black.” “I Hope You Dance” received worldwide exposure, including the Nobel Prize Awards ceremony, and was adapted into a New York Times bestselling book written by Stillers and her co-writer Mark D. Sanders. In addition to winning Song of the Year at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards, “I Hope You Dance” was named Song of the Year by CMA, ACM, NSAI, ASCAP and BMI. I didn't think I would say ASCAP on the stage. Her latest recorded work is Reba McEntire's new single, “I Can't.” More than 30 million records have been sold worldwide featuring Sillers’ compositions. Her catalog has spanned genre, from country to heavy metal, across geography and generations of recording artists. But today, we're bringing Tia to the stage to highlight her as a performer in her own work, in her own right as an artist and a creator. Without further ado, Tia Sillers.

Tia: Here we go.

[Tia Sillers performs "Tale of a Troubadour" and "Cassiopeia and Geronimo"]

Tia: I have not been this intimidated in a long time. What an astute and articulate crowd. My gosh. Woo.

Myka: I think, no reason to be intimidated. You were absolutely amazing. Another round of applause for Tia Sillers. Thank you so much.

We're gonna ask Tia to come sit in the hot seat on the orange couch here, and I'm gonna ask Jad and Major back to the stage and we'll talk a little bit about your work. Thank you so much.

Major: Tia, we are in Music City, I think, and you are, you've a long career here in Nashville. And we poets often say, um, we hope to write poems that arise to the condition of music. Do you hope to write songs that rise to the condition of poetry? Because you do. Am I right? Yeah. Yeah.

Tia: I, I think, um, that's probably both my curse and my blessing. Uh, my whole life is that, um, I've accidentally written songs that were very difficult, that connected with the world, and that's like the ultimate gift for me. But it's also made it, me lean into even more each time I write with each song that was successful. It made me, instead of becoming more inclined to want to, to have that happen again. I wasn't as enamored with the, having a number one song as I was about How did I connect with those people? and, and how was I able to, um, elevate?

I felt, I feel like, um, that I've been so fortunate that the many of my, most of my songs, all of my songs have, I've never written a song with the word beer in it. I've never had this, you know, I mean, I've never had a song with a pickup truck in it. I haven't. And somehow they've been, they've been embraced, you know?

Jad: if you were to write a song with the word beer in it, what –

Tia: I, you know, I've really been thinking about that lately. No, I actually do, I wanna write like what, well, if Kris, if Kris Kristofferson were to write a song, how would he do it? Or how would Willie Nelson do it? And I think that I've been lately, um, sort of thinking about that, and I've been more and more channeling as I write now these days, like, like Cassiopeia and Geronimo, I would, I think that Willie Nelson should sing that song. I think that he should, he would kill it. Right? And, but that's what I'm often doing now. I'm channeling like, what would Kris Kristofferson write these days? Like I'm really asking myself that.

Jad: Well, you said accidentally, you accidentally write songs. What, what's the accidentally part?

Tia: Well, I mean that, um, a very long time ago, in another life I was uh, commercial, I knew I wanted to be a songwriter, and I was, I was at Vanderbilt. I was – I Vanderbilt's been very good to me too – and I was going to summer school at Vanderbilt and taking a class in economics, and I met another guy who was also a Vanderbilt student, and he was playing a gig down at Amy's.

And he was this incredibly hot, sexy fella, and all the women were in love with him. I was not, I was just more… but I thought it, I was already having this inkling of secretly writing songs and poetry and everything like that, all this time. And he mentions at the end of the class to – I should come see a show. So I did, and I came to a show and it was my first experience watching someone on stage with tremendous charisma and wattage. He had “the quan” to, to quote Jerry McGuire, like the magic quan. And I was like, wow, this guy could be a star. But his songs were terrible.

And so after class, the next day, he asked me how I liked the show and I said, I think you've got a lot of star power, but you need help with your songs and I think you ought to let me do that. And I started writing with him and then I went away back to college, I was going to Chapel Hill. And while I was back in college, he got a publishing deal and then he got a record deal and all these things. And that's what, and then I got my first hits through him writing these songs with him and they were like super hyper-intelligent songs. So it was crazy. I mean he, he was over, one record on the label. I mean, 'cause it was too smart for the market, but it was really fun.

Major: But I'm kind of happy you didn't go into finance. But I do wanna ask, I really much want my students to learn to songwrite, to write songs. If you were teaching a course, what would be essential to share with them?

Tia: One of the things with poetry, as I was listening to the two poets today, it really struck me that they very much saw an experience or they were experiencing something very real, very visceral. And then they were trying to capture it through an economy of words. Right? And even as Mark said, like the placement on the page to where the page would guide you as to the breaks, right?

And I think what happens, which is fascinating. So in a way with poetry, the words are at the service of the page, not just what you're hearing, right? So it's you, there's two ways you experience poetry. It's the person sitting in silence in their own personal life reading this thing and breaking it the way they think it should be, and maybe even reading it aloud to themselves in their own cadence. Very rarely does the, a reader of poetry ever really hear Walt Whitman speak or you speak or whatever. And then it becomes different when you actually hear the poet read it out loud, right? So it's, those are two different experiences.

Well, with songs, almost every, all the lyrics have to be at the service of the music. Uh, the music is kind of the page, maybe? I'm thinking off my head right here. Um, that. Oh, what's really fun was I picked two songs today that I feel that they stand completely on the page. Like they could just be a piece of poetry without the music. But, um.

Major: So you chose the Apache leader Geronimo…

Tia: Mm-hmm?

Major: To be in a relationship with Cassiopeia.

Tia: Mm-hmm.

Major: A Greek figure. That sounds very literary to me.

Tia: Yes.

Major: Yeah.

Tia: Well, I'm also, I’m a, I have a strange, uh, tragic story. But, so I was married to a wonderful man and my favorite collaborator, and he died of cancer. And now I feel that I… I don't even, I didn't even realize that I, that's a song I wrote by myself, and a lot of my songs are – I do, but as a professional songwriter, you also collaborate often. But it was only several of my friends said, well, you clearly wrote that about your relationship with your late husband, except that you’re Geron–, I'm Geronimo and he's Cassiopeia.

And we make this, uh, strange, heavenly, for a long time I felt like this is another thing I wanna write about in a song. But forever I felt that he was a ghost. And now, recently he's turned into an angel. And I much prefer living with an angel than a ghost. And I wanna capture that somehow in a song. But that, I realize that I think that, yeah, I'm, I'm Geronimo and he's Cassiopeia, but we make it work. You know. Yeah.

Major: One last question. Didi and I sometimes – we're neighbors, by the way. Didi and I will sometimes hear you playing on your, your porch. Do you write every day?

Tia: Uh. No, but I do. Um, one of the things that Moss, that's my late husband's name. He was an amazing musician and performer, and he practiced every day. And I remember, and I'm now mad at myself, I just wanna smack myself forever saying anything snide or snippy to him. But I would often lament that he had to practice so much. And we would go on vacation and he'd have to bring a guitar so he could practice. You know, I mean, it was always like a, you know, every, has to practice, practice, practice.

And once he died, I realized that I needed to practice. Like, that was this thing I needed to take up. The practice, the practice, the practice. So it's very much no matter what, every day I practice.

Major: Thank you Tia Sillers, for joining us on this stage this evening.

Okay. We have –

Jad: This feels very cruel, Major. I had so many questions, but I was like, I know we, I cannot, I’m not allowed to ask them. Like we, that could, that, that conversation could have gone on for like an hour and a half.

Major: Absolutely. Yeah. No doubt. Do you, do you wanna just put one in the ether?

Jad: I just wanna notice that. I just wanna notice the cruelty. What’s that?

Major: Do you wanna put one in the ether?

Jad: No, no, no, no. That's okay.

Major: Didi Jackson is the author of the poetry collections My Infinity and Moon Jar. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, BOMB, The New Yorker, and World Literature Today. She has had poems selected for Best American Poetry, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem A Day, and The Slowdown with Tracy K. Smith.

She's the recipient of the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, a Dean's Faculty Fellow at Vanderbilt. She teaches creative writing. Most recently, she completed her certification as a Tennessean naturalist.

Ciona Rouse is a poet and educator. She's the author of the chapbook Vantablack. Her poetry is featured in poets.org, The Slowdown, Oxford American, and on NPR’s Turning the Tables. She has been a visiting writer at Vanderbilt and the University of the South, Sewanee, guest co-curator of the exhibition Kara Walker: Cut to the Quick, originating at the Frist Art Museum. Rouse lives in Nashville, Tennessee where she has or is opening Bard's Towne, a poetry-centric bookstore and bar. Please welcome Ciona and Didi Jackson.

Didi, can we start with you and a poem?

Didi: Sure.

Major: Thanks.

Didi: This poem is titled “Wild.” I don't think I need to really say much about it. Yeah, I'm just gonna go straight in.

Wild

When we moved our cat to our new house,

the first thing he did was slip up

the chimney without doubt or fear

after feeling a slight draft of cold air

escape from the firebox’s black mouth.

He was looking for a way out. A way home.

He scrambled up what we’d thought would

become the heart of the house. Nothing

could lure him down. No food lifted on cardboard

or softly sung ballads. He wedged himself beyond

the narrow throat and sat on the smoke shelf,

safe in soot and ash.

When I was little, we didn’t have a fireplace.

Even though it could snow in Florida,

no one had flues to clean or creosote to peel

from brick, no ash thin as onionskin to watch

take wing and fly above flames. I was a sleepwalker

through most of those days. A passenger in

my own life. A lawn full of dandelion seed heads,

lion’s-tooth, all waiting for breath. I couldn’t look

to my family and see myself reflected there. I was

born to no one. I was wild. And when the water

seemed to hiss down by the lake, I knew it was

to me it called. You’ll have to do better than that,

said the grackle, drinking at the water’s edge,

wedged between weeds and cattails. To be wild, that is.

Major: Ciona.

Ciona: Ah, so wonderful. Thank you for the invitation to be here and to sit next to Didi and read work. And thank you to everyone for being here to hear poetry aloud. Um, I do have a setup and it's probably long. But, um… it may be longer than the poem actually.

Uh, but the poem I'm reading, I've been studying the Chamberlain–Khan Act of 1918, in which the government decided that it would be, uh, the law to arrest women, um, to protect soldiers from venereal diseases. And, uh, so in the process of doing that, I saw an image in, um – this lasted for a long time, by the way. So, um, I saw an image in 1940, and so I wanna tell you about that image and then the image that it made me think of, and then I'll read the poem so it sets it up for you.

So, uh, that image that I saw was a World War II poster by an anonymous artist. Uh, it has a woman, a white woman, though her face is shaded, uh, and shadowed to be maybe more of an ambiguous skin tone. And she is glancing backwards over her left shoulder, her large eyelashes completely obscuring her eyes. She has this fully made-up face. She looks like a vixen holding a cigarette between her bright red lips. Um, she has on a red beret. And the backdrop is this shadowy gray-blue. Um, above her head in red letters, a message says, “She may be..” and it has ellipses. And then at the bottom it says, “a bag of TROUBLE / SYPHILIS - GONORRHEA.”

So – a bag of trouble. And so we had, uh, yeah, right. Yeah. And so I immediately though, saw this image and, and, and I do often write in response to images. So it made me think of, of course, an image you may all know, in 1943, so just a few years later, by J. Howard Miller, the “We Can Do It!” poster. Um, also a woman wearing, uh, red on her head and, uh, flexing her bicep and wearing a steel worker shirt looking straight, you know, at us. Um, and feeling empowered, also fully made up. And, uh, another propaganda poster, right? To get women to work in, uh, the industries that the men had left in, uh, while they were overseas. And so I want you to imagine those two images as you hear this poem.

WE CAN DO IT: BAG OF TROUBLE

Eyes: different, but both ready. Telling

you what she wants, just what she can do.

One: flexing her bicep. One: crooking her neck.

One: the fine wine. One: the wild tannin.

One: protecting capitalists’ lusts. One: feeding

the virile stallion. One: fastening and twisting into

tin. The other: maybe: yes, the same.

She’s crisp and clean but smells

of oil and iron. And she has fresh Chantilly

clinging to her clavicle. Don’t be dizzied

by her spell, they say. A tart trap, a witchy vapor,

a siren scent meant to crash a sailor upon her shore.

The corner girl. The club girl. The waitress

in the diner who winks as she drips kerosene

into your cuppa: don’t trust her. If she covets

your glance while she slides slices of pie across the table,

beware. She’s riveting. With her wanting. Her desire

to do it. She’s riveting: her knowing. Her lips

licked and shining your way. She’s riveting:

with her wanting to know her body, know yours.

A woman flexing her sex. A woman who can do it

and does.

Major: It's a very powerful poem. And you know, one of the pleasures of reading poetry and writing poetry, but let's say reading poetry, is that, um, we're invited to take a closer scrutiny, um, to the world around us. And in this particular case, these two propaganda, uh, posters. I'll, I'll ask that question. Do you, when did the spark happen for that poem?

Did it happen upon sight or upon later reflection of these two images? I'm assuming one image fed into the other during the process.

Ciona: Yes.

Major: Could you talk about that?

Ciona: Yes. I really, I like responding to, um, visual images with poetry – ekphrasis. And so that's a practice that's very natural to me because I see something and I, and I want to put language to it. And so immediately in seeing this image and thinking of both of these women and how they were used and positioned in propaganda, yes. And it, it did flow rather quickly uh, once, once I saw them together. Like Mark, though, I do believe the writing is in the revision. So I've, I've spent quite a lot of time massaging it. I'll probably massage it more.

Major: Yeah. Didi, you, you're the, the poem about the cat, which I happen to be privileged to have been there. Um, we went out for cat food and came back and, and then we heard meowing throughout the house, but we didn't know where it came from. What you leave out, which is very interesting, is, um, this was your first day in the house, our first day together in the house. And you climbed up in the chimney to get the cat.

Didi: That makes it sound like I was a contortion-, I mean, I wasn't all the way up in the chimney.

Major: It kinda looked contortion-ist.

Didi: Yeah. I had to bend certain ways for sure.

Major: Why'd you, so I could have asked this question of even our friend Tia and Mark and Kate. Um, how do you decide what to keep in and what to leave out in the poem?

Didi: Right, right. Um, well. You mean what moments of the whole entire story, for instance?

Major: Yes.

Didi: Yeah. I mean, I don't think, nothing was made up in there. I mean, I also feel that there's, we have the liberty to add details too. Like there could have been some more interesting things that could have happened in the chimney that I, that didn't really, that I might have added to the story. But I didn't have to do that because the story truly was crazy enough. Um.

Yeah, I was trying to think of why the cat wanted to, why the cat was going for the air. And I mean, he had also in the cat's defense just had a plane ride, um, was kind of drugged, but I don't think the drugs really worked. So it gave him more energy instead of less. I mean, it was just a nightmare. Um, and we thought he was safe.

And in Florida, this is where the next, the second part of this poem comes in. We, I mean, we have fireplaces in Florida, but it's rare and you hardly ever use them. You might use 'em twice the whole year and you get excited if you have one. So I didn't grow up with a fireplace. Um, and so that made me want, I wasn't, I just, we just dropped the cat off and I thought, oh, we're, we're safe, he's fine. Easily could jump up and get up into the chimney. So, um, uh, yeah, that's, and so that's what one thing led to the next with the chimney and then my experience in Florida and what that means. Yeah.

Jad: I was very struck by the, the grackle at the end. Speaking of, I am just curious where, where, how that figure appeared to you? As, as a poet, not so much as obviously, as a, as a memory. But…

Didi: Sure. I write a lot about birds. People who know me like, know I write, there's a lot of birds in my poems. But, but that wildness when I was, and I was, I lost my train of thought for a second. But why the cat wanted out was to be in my, in my mind in the poem, want to be wild.

And that made me think about where's my wild-ness? What did, where, when did I want, when did I wanna be wild? How tame am I right now? You know? And, and in relationship to that poem, the poem you just read too. Um, and the grackle was kinda like this, the speaker for the wild in, in that moment. Um, I grew up on a lake, that's true. All that's true. Grackles, um, would come in hoards by the water's edge. But the, the, the Grackle was the speaker for the wild and the wild self.

Major: It is National Poetry Month. Right. Yeah. And what a lot of people don't know, or maybe they've forgotten, is that The Slowdown emerged as a project of former poet laureate Tracy K. Smith. Each poet laureate has to come up with an idea of how to get poetry into, uh, the public. Our friend Ada Limón decided to pull together poems in national parks. Um, Tracy came up with the idea of The Slowdown. I think, um, uh, Joseph Brodsky, uh, wanted to put, uh, anthologies of poems in hotels next to the Bible. Um, what would be your, if you were poet laureate of the state of Tennessee or Nashville or the U.S., what ideas do you have? And this isn't research, by the way.

Ciona: It could be! I mean, several hosts have been poet laureates, so, um… I, I love, I love this question because I think of it often. I met at, um, Split This Rock conference a long time ago, a guy from Iran. And I used to belly dance back in the day. And so I had been in so many Persian restaurants, and so I knew all this stuff about food. So I asked him what he missed about home, and I just knew it was gonna be, you know, some food that then we could chat about. And he said, I miss sitting at the table. I'm getting my, all my food ideas ready. Um, and he said, and talking about poetry with his friends. And I was very surprised by that. And he said, we used to talk about poetry, the way that y'all talk about Justin Bieber. And – I was so depressed.

But I do, I often think about, uh, a lot of ways that I try to move in Nashville and create spaces is so that we are talking about poetry, um, the way that people talk about Bieber or Beyonce. Um, and I keep thinking of that image of the table. And so I would love to just create dinners all over the place where people, like, each course comes with a different idea of talking about a poem and we just have this poetry dinner spaces.

I think dinners are places where you fall in love, right? You go on dates and you have those moments. Um, so fall in love with a poem, fall in love with each other. Maybe you’re strangers talking about a poem together. I just wanna see dinners all over the United States, where we are –

Major: That’s a brilliant idea.

Ciona: – talking about poets.

Didi: I would be at those dinners, I would be there.

Ciona: Yeah. So here in Nashville, I've done a couple actually, and they've been really lovely and fun. And I think of Joy Harjo saying, you know, maybe it all, the world begins at the table.

Didi: And I think, I think you're already doing certain things like that, right? Like the, I think the, um, what's the. I mean, not dinner, but the other, the other one, with the drinks and the…

Ciona: Oh yes.

Didi: With the drinking and the poems.

Ciona: Yeah, at Bard’s Towne, we'll have a bar and tables.

Didi: Yes, I couldn’t think of the name of it.

Ciona: So we'll do it there too. For sure.

Didi: So I think you're already, are there. Um, I, I was thinking about that question that you're answering. And, um, I taught high school, uh, before I came to Vanderbilt for 20 years. And I was just talking to my students today about how when Billy Collins was poet laureate, he developed that anthology called Poetry 180.

Um, and how truly important that was actually for my students. And I would start class with a poem every single day. And so if I could, if I ever had that position, I would wanna emphasize poetry in the classrooms. And not to forget about high school students, but you know, I know we often start with, you know, elementary school and, um, but all the way, all the way through. That's what I would wanna accentuate. Yeah.

Major: These are great answers. Um, let's create a list. 'Cause there was an article in the newspaper here about why doesn't Nashville have a poet laureate? So maybe we can send Mayor Freddy some ideas about poetry.

Ciona: Who is also a poet himself.

Major: Yes. He is a poet, that’s right. That's right.

Ciona: So we need to get those going. I love it.

Major: Thank you, Didi. Thank you, Ciona.

Ciona: Thank you.

Didi: Thank you.

Major: Yeah. Jad, are you a poet yet?

Jad: I…

Major: Are you on your way?

Jad: I don’t know. It would feel, I mean, I, I I I'm gonna answer your question in a, from an adjacency.

Major: Sure.

Jad: Um, I have felt, and maybe it's the, I mean, Myka mentioned the sort of the, the tumult of the last few years, last few months. Um, uh, how long has it been? I don't know, time. What is time? Uh, it, uh, something about this moment has opened my heart to poetry. Um, and I don't encounter it maybe the way that you and all the amazing, uh, uh, poets do. Uh, I don't encounter it in journals. It's usually sent back and forth, uh, through a network. But they hit different now, you know?

Major: Mm-hmm.

Jad: Uh, so I don't, I don't know if I'd call myself a poet, but I, I am, I am part of the energy loop that I was talking about, now.

Major: Mm-hmm. I love the energy loop and I, I love the idea that poetry could be a part of that. I'm also thinking about maybe what prevents us from cozying up to a poem. But we often find it when we need it, like, you're not alone in that regard.

Um, sometimes it, you know, it takes a loss of a friend or family member that brings us to a poem. Um, there are shared public events. Um, when the, when the planes went into the tower some years ago, poetry was circulating. I remember Auden's poem, “September 1, 1939.” And Adam Zagajewski’s poem, “Try to Praise the Mutilated World.”

Um, is it the, is it the perception of pretentiousness? Is it this high tone art? Um, what, what do you, what if you were head of the PR department for poetry across the globe, where should we start?

Jad: I mean, that's a, that's a great question, which is far above my pay grade. Um, I, you know, it's one of the thoughts that I take with me from hearing this incredible work read tonight, um, it makes me appreciate what is sometimes lacking in the discourse about poetry. Uh, the discourse about poetry has a bit of a joy problem. You know? But there's been so much joy and so much humor.

Major: Say that last part again. I was laughing about the joy.

Jad: Um, the, the role that humor plays.

Major: Yes.

Jad: The role that whimsy plays.

Major: Yes.

Jad: Uh, delight.

Major: Right.

Jad: That these, that poems can do that too. Um, that, uh, I mean, I was reminded about seven times, uh, tonight that that's, those are moods that are available to us. So maybe I would start there. And this might simply be a PR problem. That, you know, very often you, you find that the perception lags the reality and that the reality of poets, poetry, uh, and as it's practiced as it's consumed is not the perception.

Major: Yeah.

Jad: But the perception needs to catch up. I would say.

Major: This is a conversation that. Myka and I always have about the poems that I select. Because of course we want to address and have poetry be, um, do what poetry does best, which is to acquaint us and perk up our ears to language, but also to reflect, but also to heal.

And so a lot of times, you know, the subject matter may be addressing some of the challenges of life. But we are very conscientious about celebrating language, celebrating humanity, um, to the point that we even seek out anthologies that have a lightness of subject matter. Yeah.

Jad: Yeah. Major. I'm just, just since, just to mark the moment of this being, uh, your sign off, really…

Major: I'm in denial. Yeah.

Jad: Uh, I wonder, I mean, this is a horrible question to ask, but in the hundreds and hundreds of episodes you've done and all the thousands of poems you've read, do, do you find that certain voices, certain poems, come back to you and help you heal in these, in this moment? And if, I mean, what are those?

Major: There are, what I'm proud of is I like to think of poetry as an estate, something that we have inherited over the years. And what I'm most proud of is the younger generation of poets who are emerging and taking on the discipline, but also thinking about poetry as relevant to, uh, their lives. So those poets are there. But we are also, consider it really a crucial part of our mission, I think, is to have those younger poets be in conversation with, with that estate. And to encourage them to kind of reacquaint themselves with those, uh, with those voices. In all the thousands, I would say is, are the ones that, interestingly enough, are the ones that, um, uh, whose lines I kind of live with in my body and my head, uh, because they address something that is going on at that particular moment.

Jad: Mm-hmm.

Major: Yeah.

Jad: Mm-hmm. I mean, I certainly will take from tonight, uh, Mark quoting the Frost last line.

Major: Mm-hmm.

Jad: Uh, I'm gonna probably misquote it, but “For once, then something,” or is that, is that correct?

Major: Yes, that's right.

Jad: That's right. That, uh.

Major: I have another one you can take with you from Frost.

Jad: Oh, please.

Major: It's from “Birches.” It's about three fourths of the way down. “Earth’s the right place for love: / I don’t know where it's likely to go better.” And when I hear that line, it has me reaffirm and recommit myself to not burying my head during these moments of crisis, but to spreading the joy and the love and the richness of our humanity through poetry.

So I'm gonna say thank you Myka Kielbon for two and a half years of working together at The Slowdown.

Thank you Porch. Thank you, Katie. Thank you, Susannah. Thank you board members for supporting The Porch. And thank you to the folks at Analog and have a safe, safe drive home. Thank you for joining us. Thank you Jad.

Myka: And thank you again to Major. One, one big round applause again to Major for everything you do for The Slowdown. Thank you again, Jad. That's all I have. But they have fabulous, fabulous classes at The Porch. Fabulous things to listen to on The Slowdown. We're so grateful to be here. Everybody get home safe. That’s SlowTake.