[{"id":76,"date":"2020-02-18T16:03:13","date_gmt":"2020-02-18T16:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/podcastingtemplate\/?page_id=76"},"modified":"2020-02-18T16:04:13","modified_gmt":"2020-02-18T16:04:13","slug":"previous-episodes","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/poetryisntdead\/previous-episodes\/","title":{"rendered":"Past Episodes"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3149,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-76","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/poetryisntdead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/poetryisntdead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/poetryisntdead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/poetryisntdead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3149"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/poetryisntdead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/poetryisntdead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/76\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/poetryisntdead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":2,"date":"2020-02-12T14:58:48","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T14:58:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/podcastingtemplate\/?page_id=2"},"modified":"2020-05-01T17:17:26","modified_gmt":"2020-05-01T17:17:26","slug":"sample-page","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/poetryisntdead\/","title":{"rendered":"Latest Episode"},"content":{"rendered":"

May 1, 2020: W.S. Merwin and Break up Poetry<\/strong><\/p>\n

On this episode of Poetry Isn’t Dead, host Jordan Moldenhauer interviews poet Amanda Julia Scott about her experience writing “Seasons,” a work inspired by W.S. Merwin’s “The Nails.”<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/poetryisntdead\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1581\/2020\/05\/episode-1-poetry-isnt-dead-5120-11.25-AM.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

SHOW TRANSCRIPTION<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

(Music: “Silent Observer” begin for :12 seconds)<\/em><\/p>\n

Jordan<\/strong>: Hi, welcome to poetry isn\u2019t dead, a podcast featuring discussions with and about modern poets about\u00a0 their favorite poems, processes, and inspirations. I\u2019m your host, Jordan Moldenhauer, and I’ll be using my experience as a young poet to interview some of the academics, writers and readers of poetry who help keep the genre alive.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Today we are taking a dive into post-breakup poetry. I\u2019ll be interviewing a fellow poet and my best friend Amanda Julia Scott about one of her favorite poems, \u201cThe Nails\u201d by W.S. Merwin, and how it inspired her poem \u201cSeasons.\u201d I am so excited to have my best friend joining me, with all the anxieties that can surround doing anything for the first time, especially in circumstances like the coronavirus, which threw some wrenches into my original plans. Because of the coronavirus, by the way, I am recording from my home in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Amanda is recording all the way from Washington, D.C. But I guess all we can do in life is move forward with what we have!<\/span><\/p>\n

Just to give you some context for \u201cThe Nails,\u201d this poem was originally published in The Paris Review 1961, and appeared in his collection The Moving Target in 1963. It\u2019s a poem about love, and heartbreak, but in a very Merwin like fashion asks more questions than it answers; the feelings around a breakup are murky, and multileveled, and Merwin brings some of these levels up without telling you which one he decides to stand on. So here is Amanda Julia Scott reading \u201cthe Nails by W.S. Merwin.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amanda reads “The Nails:”<\/em><\/p>\n

The Nails, by W.S Merwin<\/span><\/p>\n

I gave you sorrow to hang on your wall<\/span><\/p>\n

Like a calendar in one color.<\/span>
\n<\/span>I wear a torn place on my sleeve.<\/span>
\n<\/span>It isn\u2019t as simple as that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Between no place of mine and no place of yours<\/span>
\n<\/span>You\u2019d have thought I\u2019d know the way by now<\/span>
\n<\/span>Just from thinking it over.<\/span>
\n<\/span>Oh I know<\/span>
\n<\/span>I\u2019ve no excuse to be stuck here turning<\/span>
\n<\/span>Like a mirror on a string,<\/span>
\n<\/span>Except it\u2019s hardly credible how<\/span>
\n<\/span>It all keeps changing.<\/span>
\n<\/span>Loss has a wider choice of directions<\/span>
\n<\/span>Than the other thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

As if I had a system<\/span>
\n<\/span>I shuffle among the lies<\/span>
\n<\/span>Turning them over, if only<\/span>
\n<\/span>I could be sure what I\u2019d lost.<\/span>
\n<\/span>I uncover my footprints, I<\/span>
\n<\/span>Poke them till the eyes open.<\/span>
\n<\/span>They don\u2019t recall what it looked like.<\/span>
\n<\/span>When was I using it last?<\/span>
\n<\/span>Was it like a ring or a light<\/span>
\n<\/span>Or the autumn pond<\/span>
\n<\/span>Which chokes and glitters but<\/span>
\n<\/span>Grows colder?<\/span>
\n<\/span>It could be all in the mind.\u00a0 Anyway<\/span>
\n<\/span>Nothing seems to bring it back to me.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I\u2019ve been to see<\/span>
\n<\/span>Your hands as trees borne away on a flood,<\/span>
\n<\/span>The same film over and over,<\/span>
\n<\/span>And an old one at that, shattering its account<\/span>
\n<\/span>To the last of the digits, and nothing<\/span>
\n<\/span>And the blank end.<\/span><\/p>\n

The lightning has shown me the scars of the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had a long look at someone<\/span>
\n<\/span>Alone like a key in a lock<\/span>
\n<\/span>Without what it takes to turn.<\/span><\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t as simple as that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Winter will think back to your lit harvest<\/span>
\n<\/span>For which there is no help, and the seed<\/span>
\n<\/span>Of eloquence will open its wings<\/span>
\n<\/span>When you are gone.<\/span>
\n<\/span>But at this moment<\/span>
\n<\/span>When the nails are kissing the fingers good-bye<\/span>
\n<\/span>And my only<\/span>
\n<\/span>Chance is bleeding from me,<\/span>
\n<\/span>When my one chance is bleeding,<\/span>
\n<\/span>For speaking either truth or comfort<\/span>
\n<\/span>I have no more tongue than a wound.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jordan<\/b>: So what was the context that you first read this poem under, and what spoke to you about it when you first read it?<\/span><\/p>\n

Amanda<\/b>: Well, I read this poem during my creative writing class last semester and we were asked to find some poems on Poetry Foundation and I stumbled upon this one. I honestly have no idea how, I just looked up random poems and while I was reading this, I discovered that it was a poem about a breakup and the experience afterwards, and the pain and the hope that you feel. This poem was especially meaningful to me because during that time that\u2019s exactly what I was going through, so when I looked at this piece of poetry I saw all of my feelings reflected in it and I was able to understand the deeper meaning from what I was feeling, and that what I was feeling was natural and that everyone feels this every breakup they have.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jordan<\/b>: Can you tell me what are some of your favorite moments in this poem, like what especially speaks to you?<\/span><\/p>\n

Amanda<\/b>: hm, what especially speaks to me is the second stanza, um, I don\u2019t know, this one, when I read the stanza I actually picture myself walking home and being stuck between the place of my ex lover and myself and not knowing where I want to go and just feeling so stuck. And he also says in the poem I have no excuse to be stuck here, and that’s exactly how I felt, but even though there’s no excuse you keep coming up with reasons to validate the way you\u2019re feeling. When they\u2019re talking about these places of mine and yours, it’s not just my place and your place, its throughout the poem, a place of understanding and reconciliation. 1:40<\/span><\/p>\n

Jordan: The thing I think you\u2019ll also appreciate from this is that there’s a lot of different answers that Merwin, like, wants to explore, and theres a lot of different, because theres a lot of different feelings for I know you during that, because Amanda and I are good friends, just for context for everyone whos listening.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amanda<\/b>: best friends<\/span><\/p>\n

Jordan<\/b>: um, best friends, um, I think like this, this kind of explores okay yes, I want to go back to the person who I loved so much, but at the same time, I know that what we did was the right thing to do, and, like we are making good choices and we are moving forward, but the way he does that, but kind of letting all of this thoughts blend together into one logic but also a lot of different logics. It leaves the question open ended still, which is kind of how you\u2019re going to feel in a breakup regardless.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amanda<\/b>: yeah, that’s true.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jordan<\/b>: So when you were moving on from this work to create your own, what are some of the things that you wanted to take away from it?<\/span><\/p>\n

Amanda<\/b>: well, the first like \u201cI gave you-\u201d something, I loved that so much, so I wanted to use I gave you and then I continued the whole poem, but when I was reading this poem, I was really scared to start writing about my breakup, I was really scared what I was going to say out loud that I\u2019d been thinking that I wasn\u2019t sure if it was real. I was really scared to make things permanent so it was kind of challenging. I liked \u201cI gave you sorrow\u201d a lot and I loved \u201cbetween no place of mine and no place of yours\u201d and I took a little spin on each of the words, like took a sentence and changed the syntax of it all so it was like between my place and your place kind of thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jordan: yeah it\u2019s doing that like \u201csteal like an artist\u201d um,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Amanda: yes!<\/span><\/p>\n

Jordan<\/b>: I\u2019ll have to find what that source is, but it’s so good, essentially in creative writing classes they always teach us that when you read somebody else\u2019s work that it\u2019s okay to take inspiration because there’s no such thing as an original idea, so what Amanda has done in these things is she\u2019s taken a line and kind of made it, it felt really personal to her because its what we would view as like a general human universal, and she\u2019s gonna take that and apply it in a more personal way. So that’s what we will hope to read in her poem.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amanda<\/b>: yeah, and I also just wanted to make like I wanted it to be, I didn\u2019t want it to just be a sad poem, I didn\u2019t want it to be about me, you know, sitting in my bed I guess being upset but more of the moving forward and what will come so instead of it being a poem about despair it’s more about hope, and like how the seasons change, so do your feelings, and with seasons you move on. And I wanted to make sure I was, it was a poem I would look at and always know that I\u2019m going to be okay later and I\u2019m going to get through this and it isn\u2019t forever.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jordan: Let\u2019s go ahead and read your poem!<\/span><\/p>\n

Amanda<\/b>, laughing: okay, let’s find it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amanda reads her poem, \u201cSeasons:\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

I gave you guilt<\/span><\/p>\n

in the shape of a necklace.<\/span><\/p>\n

Everyday it will hang<\/span><\/p>\n

from your neck,<\/span><\/p>\n

A subtle reminder of the girl<\/span><\/p>\n

you once<\/span><\/p>\n

met<\/span><\/p>\n

knew<\/span><\/p>\n

loved<\/span><\/p>\n

and finally,<\/span><\/p>\n

broke.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Winter will look back to\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

that one summer,<\/span><\/p>\n

your sun kissed shoulders<\/span><\/p>\n

(those shoulders)<\/span><\/p>\n

that you would never\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

let me slather\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

with sunscreen<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Winter will look back\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To our autumn strolls,<\/span><\/p>\n

Cigarettes twirling\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

in our hands,<\/span><\/p>\n

smoke dancing<\/span><\/p>\n

around us,<\/span><\/p>\n

littered between my place and his,<\/span><\/p>\n

the cigarettes that know of our love story<\/span><\/p>\n

almost like a trail<\/span><\/p>\n

these buds<\/span><\/p>\n

will lead me to you<\/span><\/p>\n

these cigarettes lead me to<\/span><\/p>\n

a place of love<\/span><\/p>\n

these seasons I have known\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

and loved you in.<\/span><\/p>\n

But come spring I will grow and blossom<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Without you.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ending Interview with Amanda<\/em>:<\/span><\/p>\n

Jordan<\/b>: and then we clap. Oh, one, two, three.<\/span><\/p>\n

Muffled clapping and laughing.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Jordan<\/b>: anyways. So, obviously this is a poem reflecting your breakup.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amanda:<\/b> yeah, very.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jordan: <\/b>Very much. So I guess in my first reflections of this, it definitely has Merwin\u2019s meandering kind of tone, where you explore both the relationship in past and present and future, and you also don\u2019t really come to conclusions about what any of these feelings mean to you.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amanda: <\/b>Yeah, I think I definitely did that with purpose. Like I mentioned earlier, writing this was very scary for me, this was the first time I was going to write about someone who literally ripped out my heart and ran away with it. So I didn\u2019t want to talk about it. But I also wanted it to be a poem that someone would read and you might not always think, like, it was someone, wait, I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m saying.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I purposely didn\u2019t put any emotions in it, and I wanted it to be, I didn\u2019t want to put any expository in it like I\u2019m sad, I\u2019m whatever but I thought that throughout all of this you could kind of, like Jordan said, you can see how I go from the past, the present, and the future of the relationship but I wanted it to be something everyone could read and anyone could relate to. You didn\u2019t have to have this feeling for you to like this poem and for you to get it or for it to impact you. I just wanted it to be a poem that would, for some reason, make everyone feel, I don\u2019t even, what am I doing, what am I saying.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jordan:<\/b> No, you\u2019re on the right track, I think what you\u2019re talking about, what you\u2019re trying to get at, is this is the universal human breakup that Merwin is discussing; when you break up with someone you feel a lot of things because that is someone that you used to call home but it’s also someone that you need to move away from and that’s okay.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amanda<\/b>: Yes, I know what to say. So throughout the whole poem, I didn\u2019t want to put any of my emotions into it because if you\u2019re going through a breakup, you know exactly how it feels. You know that pain. You know how much it hurts. And breaking up is something that happens with everyone and I wanted it to feel, I wanted it to be the reader\u2019s. I wanted them to look at this and seem themselves and project their own emotions onto it instead of me projecting my feelings and pain and hurt onto them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jordan<\/b>: That\u2019s exactly what I was thinking about too, is that this evokes kind of the confessional poetry of Sylvia Plath or Anne Sexton, where it’s a very personal feeling that you\u2019re feeling and it feels so individual, and you can also see it through the images. And what you do is you take images that represent these feelings to you but they could also represent those feelings to anyone else. I think that that is incredibly powerful in this poem, not that I can trace shoulders that I\u2019ve never put sunscreen on, but I can feel that rejection that you must have felt in that moment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amanda<\/b>: And throughout the whole, like throughout the poem, I kind of wanted that line to show how the relationship was, it was kind of one sided, it was always the other person wanting to do something for the other, the other person rejecting it and not doing anything back, so I thought, I loved putting in the shoulders and saying you would never let me slather them in sunscreen, even though this is happening during summer and you\u2019re rejecting something that\u2019s going to protect you from something else.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jordan<\/b>: And you kind of conclude with come spring you\u2019ll grow again. And the spring is happening now.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amanda<\/b>: Look at me now!<\/span><\/p>\n

Jordan<\/b>: The springs happening now, how do you feel?<\/span><\/p>\n

Amanda<\/b>: I feel good, I feel good. When I look at this poem now, it was crazy, because when Jordan asked me to pull up some of my poetry and I read this one, I remember writing it and having so much emotion for it but now when I read it, it feels like a poem I will come back to in the next break up and read it again and I’ll be able to feel all of it all over again just a different story, and maybe not shoulders, and maybe not cigarettes, just the whole thing will be the same, when you love someone through seasons but ultimately you have to love yourself through all of that too not just the other person.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jordan<\/b>: That’s such a beautiful message to end with! Thank you so much for reading your poetry on my podcast today, it’s been so lovely talking to my best friend!<\/span><\/p>\n

Amanda<\/b>: Oh my God! Yeah, we haven\u2019t talked in so long it was great!<\/span><\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/em>:<\/p>\n

<\/i>Jordan: <\/b>In reflection of Amanda\u2019s work, I think there are a few lessons we can take away from this on a craft level. I looked up that source by the way, from earlier, the book is called \u201cSteal like an Artist\u201d by Austin Kleon, and it talks about the proper way to take inspiration from another written text. The bottom line is that ideas are, kind of, on the free market, but you have to be careful because if you steal incorrectly, it’s likely plagiarism. But what Amanda did, taking inspiration from Kleon and Merwin, was to feel inspired by an idea, and personalize it to herself. When I am writing, and some great advice I\u2019ve gotten from mentors, I emphasize the honesty in my work. Is what I\u2019m saying applying to the subject as genuinely as I can convey it? Do the images work together to create that feeling and tone? Because at the end of the day, in describing your feelings that way, you create cracks of intimacy that a reader can enter, and really feel empathy with you, the same way Amanda does when she reads Merwin.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To wrap it up for this episode, I\u2019ll give you guys a break up themed prompt: write a poem featuring three key physical objects from a former or current relationship that signified different things about the relationship to you. Avoid making conclusions about what this means about the relationship. You can email your work for me to read on my next episode, and all of the podcast contact information is on the website. Thanks for listening, and remember guys, poetry isn\u2019t dead, at least not yet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

SHOW NOTES:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Music: Silent Observer by Sarah, The Illstrumentalist<\/a><\/p>\n

Be sure to check out “The Nails” by W.S. Merwin on the Poetry Foundation!<\/a><\/p>\n

And in the podcast, I mention a craft text called “Steal like an Artist” bu Austin Kleon<\/a>, which I highly recommend to anyone seeking inspiration!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

May 1, 2020: W.S. Merwin and Break up Poetry On this episode of Poetry Isn’t Dead, host Jordan Moldenhauer interviews poet Amanda Julia Scott about her experience writing “Seasons,” a work inspired by W.S. Merwin’s “The Nails.” SHOW TRANSCRIPTION: (Music:… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3149,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/poetryisntdead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/poetryisntdead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/poetryisntdead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/poetryisntdead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3149"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/poetryisntdead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/poetryisntdead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edspace.american.edu\/poetryisntdead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}]