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Episode 400: Richard Blanco on Fever Writing and Finding the Poem within the Poem
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Richard Blanco was the Presidential Inaugural poet at Pres. Obama's second inauguration, a winner of the National Humanities Award medal, and the author of Homeland of My Body (Beacon Press).
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Introduction & Shoutout to Sponsors
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Alright CNFers, let's do my requisite shout out to Athletic Brewing, my favorite NA beer out there, and from someone who has been drinking a little too much A beer, if you visit athleticbrewing.com and use the promo code BRENDANO20 at checkout, you get a little discount.
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Also, part of what keeps the lights on is C&F Pod HQ is taking on editing clients and or writing coaches, maybe coaching and maybe even a little book marketing advice. I'm not perfect, but I have some experience. I talk to a lot of writers on the show. I do a lot of writing and editing. Been doing this mess in one way or another for 20 years. If you're looking to level up, you can email me at the podcast email, creativenonfictionpodcast.com and we'll start a dialogue.
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Okay. And I must say, you got a great voice. Oh, thank you very much. Jared, the right business there.
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AC and Everidge is the creative nonfiction podcast.
Celebrating Podcast Milestones
00:01:25
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Show where I speak to badass people about telling true stories. I'm Brendan Ryan O'Mara. B. Ryan O'Mara. Your buddy B.O. Isn't that cool? I got a good voice for this. At last!
00:01:41
Speaker
publishing the 400th new episode of this podcast. The double zero pods are a special occasion to bring in a ringer.
Introducing Richard Blanco
00:01:51
Speaker
And who better than someone who read a poem at President Barack Obama's second inauguration? No big deal. It's Richard Blanco, the Cuban-American poet who looks alarmingly like the actor Lee Pace. Go look it up.
00:02:05
Speaker
His latest collection is Homeland of My Body and is published by Beacon Press. In 2023, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden.
00:02:18
Speaker
Yeah. I'll fill you in a bit more on Richard in a moment, but be sure you're heading over to BrendanTheMera.com for show notes and to sign up for my monthly rage against the Algorithm newsletter, book recommendations, a unique short essay, links to cool shit, and I'm gonna flirt with bringing back the CNF and Happy Hour and get the band back together, looking at you, Laurie, Suzanne, and Betsy.
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You can also follow along on Instagram and threads at Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Hey, and there's also patreon.com slash CNF Pod. In case you're willing or able to throw a few bucks into the CNF Pod coffers, I understand if you're unable, things are tight. I think I'll try to figure out a way to do something like office hours also for the Patreon crew. I do these video threads, but I was maybe something more like a live
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live kind of thing, whatever's on your mind, do my best to try to answer. I might not have all the answers, but I might have a couple, and that's kind of cool. Free ways to support the show, of course. You can leave a review on Apple Podcasts or a rating on Spotify.
00:03:31
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And I'll read that sucker right here like this one from Curious Chimp, Sublime Sustenance. I've just recently followed this podcast and what a joy. Brendan does an exceptional job keeping the conversations real. It's clear his subjects trust and respect.
00:03:50
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Brendan's intentions and curiosities about writing in general and their writing life specifically. Listening to this podcast often feels like listening in on two writing friends connecting after a while apart. Excited to share their discoveries and passions with each other. Honest and generous insights into the wide variety of creative lives. Good stuff. Truly, that review was good stuff. Thank you very much, Mr. and Mrs. Chimp.
00:04:20
Speaker
Richard Blanco, people.
00:04:22
Speaker
He's the author of For All of Us, One Today, An Inaugural, Poets Journey, and The Prince of Los Cocuyos, a Miami Childhood. His list of prizes and honors are too long to name, so visit richard-blanco.com and you can read his impressive curriculum vitae. He's a civil engineer and also an associate professor at Florida International University.
00:04:52
Speaker
In this episode, he talks about fever writing, showing his rough drafts to his students that can be awfully
Richard Blanco on Poetry Writing
00:05:00
Speaker
illuminating. We're like, how is this thing so good? And then if you have the courage to show your blood-stained draft to people, they're like, oh, okay, I get it. It wasn't always so brilliant, and it's a grind.
00:05:16
Speaker
The Grind Man. He also reads two poems at the end of this conversation, which really brings it all to life if you ask me.
00:05:25
Speaker
There'll be a parting shot at the end of this podcast. Wow, you haven't had one of those in a while. Now that I'm under two months to go on the book. Shit getting real over here. My over-caffeinated, over-boosed mind will fill you in on some stuff. But for now, here's Richard Blanco, the milestone episode 400.
00:05:58
Speaker
It's something I noticed in reading your latest book, too. There are a lot of grace notes of various things. One I picked up on was coffee. I feel like there was a lot of mention of coffee. I want to get a sense of your love of it, or your memory of it, maybe how you enjoy it.
00:06:25
Speaker
Well, as a Cuban American, I mean, you're drinking coffee at like six months old. So Cuban coffee, which is super hyper speed espresso. And it's very much a cultural thing, too. I mean, like most cultures, but yeah, I grew up drinking coffee. I love coffee. I'm also a night owl, so I need coffee in the morning.
00:06:53
Speaker
But espresso, I can't deal with regular old American coffee. It does nothing for me. I travel with instant Cuban coffee. So to spike up that hotel coffee, which is just, there's never any good hotel coffee, unless I have an espresso machine. But yeah, it's very ritualistic morning. And of course, cigarettes go with coffee, but I don't write too much about cigarettes because
00:07:21
Speaker
It's frowned upon, but it might be the last living poet, smoker in the United States, maybe. That's great. When do words in writing become important to you as you're coming up as a young man?
From Engineer to Poet: Richard's Journey
00:07:40
Speaker
Well, as I like to say, I kind of got into poetry through the back door. So I'm a civil engineer, that was my first degree, and I've been a practicing civil engineer for most of my life. And it was actually when I first started working in my consulting firm that I started writing. Not poetry, but I realized my job involved, half of my job was writing, writing reports and studies and
00:08:07
Speaker
letters and understanding tone and understanding word choice and all these kinds of things that that I needed to be effective at my job. Oh and of course proposals which are you know nothing but
00:08:20
Speaker
primarily a narrative of your vision for your project and with a lot of hyperbole in there. And so I just got sort of geeked out with language. And I started, well, I should say, let me backtrack. I was always a left brain, right brain person, kid. I love everything. I still love everything, every kind of subject matter. And I always knew I wanted to do something creative, but I didn't know what that would be. And so when this happened in the office, I said, hmm, I wonder what I know nothing about.
00:08:50
Speaker
poetry. Let's study that. So I started writing poetry, very bad poems at first, as usual, as is typical. My sense of poetry was really archaic, obviously, and was writing about
00:09:05
Speaker
daffodils and stuff in Miami as if I'd ever seen a daffodil. But I thought I had to write like one of those dead British white guys. So, so I just took a class at a Miami Dade College back then and just started exploring it really just following my creative and intellectual curiosities. And eventually apply eventually applied to a master's program at my alma mater from my engineering degree where I teach now actually,
00:09:32
Speaker
And I got in, and the rest, as they say, is history. But more recently, I realized I was still thinking, why poetry? Why not painting? I don't know.
00:09:45
Speaker
acting or so I don't know. And I realized that I think it was because I never remember not knowing two languages. I arrived at the United States when I was 45 days old, and I was the first one in the family to really learn English. So I was translating for my parents at four years old, not whole conversations, but words. And so I think that imprinted in me several things when I
00:10:12
Speaker
not taking language for granted and understanding that language was not just a form of communication, but a way of thinking, a way of being in the world. And also that language is power. Here I am, as I grew older, my parents were at my linguistic mercy whenever we left Miami. So I think that made it imprint. And so when that happened in the engineering office, I think it just sort of clicked.
00:10:39
Speaker
And a lot of times you speak with poets who have gotten to a certain level of publication. You find this with novelists, too, even nonfiction writers. They always talk about the early stuff as bad short stories, bad novels, bad essays, bad poems. And for you, how would you define what a bad poem was for you back then and how that evolved?
00:11:08
Speaker
I think what defines a bad poem is also in a way the opposite of what defines a good poem. I think at the heart of what makes a good poem is I think a certain honesty, a certain also discovery that the poem isn't about presenting an idea or, you know, poetry is so much like music, right? Like it has to stir the emotions, but it, and it also has to just like, there's a discovery. If I, I feel like if I don't discover something in a poem,
00:11:36
Speaker
it's not a poem yet. And there's no bad poems. There's just poems we don't publish. I mean, not that there are better poems, of course. But I always know, at least, I don't know if it's a good poem, but I know when it's a poem, because it ends somewhere else than it began. And I tell this to my students all the time, just enter the poem and let the idea
00:11:59
Speaker
emerge organically from the poem. Don't put the idea before the poem. Don't put the cart before the ox. So I feel like when that happens, I feel like I have a decently successful poem. And then, of course, all sorts of matters of craft. I'm not treating the subject matter in a cliche way. Again, that's connected to a discovery.
00:12:21
Speaker
And there's also something else that I can't really put into words even as a poet, but there, I know it's a poem because my artistic persona takes over. And in a way that I'm not writing that poem anymore. And it becomes, it becomes like this other, you know, it's, it's not the person, it's not the Richard that's changing the cat litter and, and
00:12:43
Speaker
and flicking off people on I-85. This is Richard the Poet. And when that magic happens, I know there's something almost divine going on. And so I would say that I still read my very first poem from my very first creative writing classic. It was so
00:13:01
Speaker
Well, for reasons it's so important to me, but I feel it still. I feel it's important and people still connect
Exploring Themes of Identity in Poetry
00:13:11
Speaker
with it. So I would say that doesn't happen, I think, so much with poets. I think we polish so much of our poetry as much as it might happen with novelists or short story writers because we're so obsessive about the word that
00:13:29
Speaker
I would say there's lesser poems, but we probably wouldn't publish anything that we didn't consider at least a decent, decent poem. And is that first poem, is that the America poem that you wrote for Campbell McGrath? Is that right? Yes, yes it is.
00:13:50
Speaker
And, and I gotta say that, that poem, you know, speaking of what makes a good poem, like, you know, what I was writing before was not honest, right? It was, it was also not discovery. It was like my sense of, you know, these and thou's and like really highfalutin and like, you know, majestic poetry. And that poem, the assignment was write a poem about America and that assignment
00:14:14
Speaker
like just open the floodgates of all these questions that I didn't even know I had about home, place, belonging, identity. That has been my life's work to this day. As I like to say, a poet is writing one poem all their life. I feel blessed that I discovered that question really early on.
00:14:35
Speaker
And I think from then on, my poems really changed into what I would consider better poems because it was writing from a really authentic space and from a real sort of question or dilemma or a real searching. And each poem becomes a little bit of a discovery. And in the aggregate, the book is a journey through the poems of where a book also has sort of an arc and a discovery as a whole.
00:15:05
Speaker
And yeah, it's funny because when I served as presidential Naugrepoit, I told the president, yeah, it's the same assignment I got from Campbell McGrath. Like write a poem about America or for America. So talk about serendipity.
00:15:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's amazing. I've heard this assignment before, so this will be no different than what it was back in the day. It's kind of what I've been writing about all my life, right? Part of it was not just Cuban identity, but it was also what does it mean to be an American, right? They're both the same side of the coin. I mean, opposite sides of the coin, but still the same connected question.
00:15:51
Speaker
Yeah, and what I loved hearing you say earlier about essentially surrendering to the writing of a poem, it'll just kind of almost dictate its terms to you in a sense. That's just my phrasing of it. And I think maybe a lot of people who are, be it writing a poem or an essay or something,
00:16:18
Speaker
they feel like they might have something to say but they don't know how quite to say it or they are afraid of the bad writing that is going to take to get to where they want to go and yeah and how have you navigated that you know that feeling of okay I gotta get through this bad stuff to get to anything that's competent or in and ideally very good
00:16:40
Speaker
I don't know about every other point, but I think it always starts with really bad stuff. So what I do, I practice something called, and this is another myth that I also have to dispel all the time to my students. I show them my drafts so they can see what a mess, how messy the process is at the beginning. So I do something called fever writing. Sometimes I do it by hand or on the computer or both and print out and keep on sketching.
00:17:06
Speaker
And I think what that does, it exercises from you all the crap language you have, right? The stuff we're hearing every day. The good mornings, how are you? The blah, blah, blah, blah. All this stupid language that we use all day. And it gets you, it starts exercising that, like getting it out of you so that you can get to a language that's the language of poetry.
00:17:32
Speaker
What it's also doing is when we enter a poem, like Maya Angelou said, every time I write a poem, it's the first time I write a poem. When we enter a poem, if you're not going in with an idea, which is, I think, not the right way to begin, usually it's something that's tickled our subconscious. There's something that's moved us. There's something that we feel we need to write about. And we don't know what that is exactly or what nerve
00:18:00
Speaker
in the subconscious it has struck and I think what we're trying to do is find language that then has that can can pull I always say like we're using words like bait to fish into the subconscious to understand what that emotion is about where it comes from what it is how is a part of you now
00:18:18
Speaker
What does it mean in the world? What does it mean to me? And so, and so you can see it. I keep all the, I keep all the drafts in one file. So you can see it just begins with just splattering, you know, throwing jello on the wall, see what sticks. And at some point I almost compare it like also to like you're using.
00:18:36
Speaker
You're trying to tune like a guitar or piano and you're just, you know, it sounds like garbage, garbage, garbage. And then you hit that right note and something about it says, ah, this is Richard, the poet, not Richard. I've arrived. Doesn't mean the poem is done, but at that point I can trust it. It might be an image or a phrase or
00:18:59
Speaker
or sometimes a form that you discover, oh my God, this is going to be a, you know, a villanelle or something like that. And then you're able to trust moving forward the poem and you already have a basis of the kind of language you want to stay in and not revert back to.
00:19:19
Speaker
playing crappy language and the edits but it's also messy because then you'll get stuck in the middle of that you have to go to sort of back to the fever writing process and then come back into the poem and then sometimes the poem is good but there's something that's not it's craft worthy but there's something that's not
00:19:36
Speaker
jiving. I haven't gotten to that. Ah, this is what the poem is. But yeah, messy, messy at first. And then it becomes more, you know, speaking of left and right brain people often.
00:19:51
Speaker
uh, think, you know, Oh, how could you be an engineer? But I'm like, well, my math classes taught me as much about writing as English class, because they're, they're left, you know, at some point you migrate from right brain to left brain. When you start looking at the structure and you start looking at, and you start looking at, at, at sound, which is like music, right? It's very mathematical. And it's a, and it's kind of, um, but something you said earlier too, was interested in me is that the idea of the problem, right? So, and in some ways,
00:20:20
Speaker
finding the poem is also finding what the parameters are and free verse especially because you can write
00:20:28
Speaker
as long as you write anything. So sometimes that's also part of what lets you trust a poem. OK, what are the parameters? What am I going to hold to? Is this going to be a two-page poem? I start feeling, what are the things that I'm not going to do in this poetry? What are the things that I'm not going to include in this poem from all those beginning notes? So it's processes, paring down things to their essence, distilling to the most important essence of the poem.
00:20:58
Speaker
When you decided to show early drafts to your students, what effect did that have on them?
00:21:06
Speaker
they get a little freaked out because they have to write a poem a week. And I do tell them, I use an extreme example, it's like, it's 40 pages of notes for like, a one and a half page poem. So they either, but I tell them this is an extreme example, not every poem has been, is this difficult? They freak out, but I think in a good way. And I think it's eye opening for them because they
00:21:32
Speaker
You know, here's your professor showing you, you know, this is a process, right? And I think that I would hope I put some at ease. Now, another opposite reaction is like, they're still the ones that the non-believers are like, nah, you don't revise that much. You're just copying and pasting a lot.
00:21:53
Speaker
And I'm like, no. This is every single thing in there is part of the process. Some still want to cling on to this idea that poems are pure inspiration and fall out of the sky.
00:22:09
Speaker
And when lately I've seen and maybe it's because I guess some people are taking part in a nano RYMO and I've seen online that you know people are trying to like post a page of their work in progress and
00:22:25
Speaker
You know part of me is thinking it's a it's a it's a sign of maybe trying to find reassurance or validation and and and maybe you know you should just kind of like I don't know just hold hold that up and you know keep working but a lot of people the insecurities bubble up and I I noticed that because you know I feel those same pulses in me though
00:22:45
Speaker
And for work in progress or something, if you're not posting it online, which I probably wouldn't advise people to do, but that's their cup of tea, who do you trust a work in progress with as you're looking to just really hone and hone and hone?
00:23:05
Speaker
Speaking about when a poem is sort of done, I don't know that it's done, but there's a stage in a poem where I feel I can show it. In other words, the big blocks are in place, I think, to varying degrees, but something, at least it's not a bunch of gibberish floating around on the page. And my first reader is always my husband.
00:23:26
Speaker
He is, I mean, out of practicality, I have my friends, but I poet friends all the way back from graduate school. But we don't exchange poems on that level. I usually give them work once it's in a book form, and then they review my book. And then we go back into the poems and think about revision of each poem. But my husband,
00:23:54
Speaker
He's gotten pretty good over the years. He's not a writer.
00:23:58
Speaker
And he's gotten really good over the years with practicing with me. Um, and I like him as a reader because I also, he's not, see, I think sometimes giving it to a poet sometimes is good. Sometimes it's like, I don't want to debate line breaks right now. I just want to know, is this poem doing something or not? And so as a reasonably intelligent person is now quite familiar with poetry and especially my poetry, he can tell right away if this is like, eh, you know,
00:24:28
Speaker
There's something missing here and he and he knows my life well enough that he can comment on what he thinks is the poem is trying to say. And, yeah, and he grades them. It's kind of a little ritual for us, he grades them and
00:24:44
Speaker
And then puts the little hearts in them and stuff if they're good. And then I fight sometimes. I'm like, what do you mean a B minus? So no poem leaves the house until it's approved by him, though. But I'm different in the sense that I'm writing books of poetry. So like I said, then I draft these. I finish maybe a round or two revision. Then I put the poem away. And then I write some more.
00:25:14
Speaker
And then every several months I take all the poems out and I look at what they're doing and how they're speaking to each other and thinking about what book this might be. And then I put them away to write some more. And then I start writing more and more and I start ramping up how much I write. And then eventually I assemble a manuscript. And then that's what I sent to at least three or four poets. And also I always send it to a fiction writer friend of mine too, because I like
00:25:42
Speaker
that perspective too. So as I said, poets sometimes can get too much into the nape grit and can maybe sometimes get too esoteric. So I like also that other point of view from someone who's a writer but is not invested in poetry per se.
00:25:58
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I hear I know exactly what you mean. Like, if you send it to someone who is in your trade, you're like, like you said a moment ago, you're like, I'm not interested in, you know, in line breaks or your opinion on that. Like, no, it's like, it's like, what is it? What is the feeling we're evoking here? We can worry about mechanics later in the matter. But, uh, yeah, you want to go for that, like that, that emotional feeling, um, above all else and so forth.
00:26:27
Speaker
Yeah, my partner says, the best comment is, it made me cry. I'm like, okay, now I know I got something. I tell my students something similar in terms of what I call big rocks and little rocks. And I actually learned this in a management course.
00:26:47
Speaker
If you have a jar and you have a bunch of different sized rocks, and if you put all the rocks in together, they won't fit. But if you put all the big rocks in first and then let the little rocks trickle through, then it'll all fit. So that's the thing we use in my poetry class, big rocks. And then I say, okay, big rocks. And especially an undergraduate, mostly it's big rocks, right?
00:27:10
Speaker
Oh, I love that. I know over the years I've had to decode my wife's comments or when she reads anything I give to her, and I know that if she's not making a comment, she likes it. And before, I'm like, it's OK to compliment something, you know, something we need.
00:27:30
Speaker
We hate that, as ballast in the boat of our insecurities. But she only tends to make notes when she's like, things are bugging her. And I've learned to, OK, if there are no notes here, she's on. She's into it. She's in for the ride. But sometimes I'm like, it would be nice to hear something nice, Melanie. Throw me a bone here.
00:27:51
Speaker
Yeah, I always begin the workshop of a poem with a couple, you know, I always say, okay, what are some things that are really working or, you know, what are some things you really like about the poem, especially I can imagine, and at a student level, they're hypersensitive to all that. Oh, yeah. So we begin on a good note and then and then drifted to the harsher critiques.
00:28:13
Speaker
Yeah, and certainly, you know, writing, writing's ugly. Writing books is especially ugly. And there's always, it just looks like a construction scene. You know, there's chaos everywhere and weird noises. So when you're writing a book, how do you just navigate the grind of how disgusting the whole process is? And then eventually, you know, you're like, oh, look at that. That's a good little apartment building.
00:28:42
Speaker
This is where the left brain really kicks in. I love writing books and I love putting together books. I love doing it for other people. I actually teach a class on the manuscript course, which is just about all those methods and tools that you use to put all your poems together. But how I've learned to,
00:29:10
Speaker
First I'll print everything out and I usually place it in more or less chronological order because I think as we write
00:29:18
Speaker
And I'm kind of a slow writer because my gestation period is like four to five years for a book. I don't know how people write a book of poetry in a year. I just don't. I just can't. It's not the time. I just can't. It drains me. Every time I finish a poem, I need two weeks of rest. But anyway, I feel like since it's over a large time that there's already, what I'm looking for is first, what is the arc?
Compiling Poems into a Book
00:29:45
Speaker
What are the inflection points of this book? And since our minds naturally navigate through these changes, poem to poem to poem, there's an evolution, an emotional evolution.
00:29:57
Speaker
So I first lay it out chronologically. Of course, it's not perfect chronologically, but then I start messing with it. And then I start looking for, okay, are there sections? So how does that work? You know, what, what are, how do these poems are speaking? And it's, yeah, it's messy, but of course it has to be a visual process because you can't, your mind can't hold all that information. So I usually put them on the, on a big dining table that I have and then start swapping them out. And then looking at how that's happening and looking
00:30:24
Speaker
looking at how that's happening and trying it this way and then trying it that way and taking pictures of it because you're like, Oh my God, maybe that was the right order. Um, but, um, but yeah, it's, uh, it's, and then after that, I know some of the poems in that batch are not ready yet, for example, but I know they're ready enough in, in the sense of that they're saying something that I think is important to the book. So once I had, I have a first draft of the order, then I start doing a pass poem by poem of editing and editing and editing and editing.
00:30:55
Speaker
Not editing, revising, but lighter revisions unless there's a poem that's really, really, really not ready, but I want it to be ready. What happens in that process too, which is interesting, you start seeing holes and you start remembering, oh, I always wanted to write a poem about X, Y, or Z, and it probably goes here. Sometimes you've skipped a poem that you didn't realize you wanted to write.
00:31:21
Speaker
So you start writing for the book a little bit, not a lot, but like this last book that we're talking about, I maybe wrote like six or seven brand new poems within the process of already like
00:31:36
Speaker
having it at Beacon Press. I still was handing them things and reordering it a little bit. So yeah, it has to be physical. But there's just different theories that we don't need to get, not theories, but sort of strategies you would say about that. And I look for those and thinking about, again, like I said earlier, a book has to have a movement just like a poem does.
00:32:05
Speaker
Yeah, and I imagine that sometimes you might have what you consider a dynamite poem. Like, you really like it. But it's like, it just doesn't fit with this collection. And maybe it's best for this nice old poem. Maybe we can publish it somewhere, or maybe it's just got to go sit in the drawer for a while. And then you'll be like, all right, when it's ready, it's going to come back.
00:32:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, there are some poems that are like, you're like, okay, they're kind of a mystery. And like, until you really, really feel, you know, understand the book that maybe sometimes you can, okay, now I see it can fit here or not. In my case, in particular, there's been a lot more of, of waste in that sense, because I've written a lot of commissioned and occasional poems, some of them I grid
00:32:55
Speaker
Many actually have somehow fit into my work, but some haven't. And I like them and I think they're great and they do something wonderful, but it's not part of a book. It's too specific to something that sort of takes you out of the arc of the book.
00:33:13
Speaker
But it's surprising, there's, well, in this new book, there's a poem that was written for the inauguration, second inaugural of the president, listen to me, the president, no, Governor Janet Mills. And, you know, it's so much about nature and stuff in Maine, right? And I thought,
00:33:33
Speaker
I sent it to my agent, and he's like, no, this fits great. It's a good poem. So I was like, oh, really? So what I do is I'll just leave for the most part those poems. I don't let the reader know where they are. I put them in the back in notes. So if they want to read where these poems came from.
00:33:53
Speaker
One of them was actually, well, it was in the previous collection, it was actually a poem that I wrote for a radio and web ad spot as a video they did for advertising for, if one could call it fine art advertising, it's not like, it's artistic advertising.
00:34:18
Speaker
It sort of commissioned me to write a poem about Havana Club. And eventually I did edit that one. Is there something important in there? So that's another possibility. And then you edit out of the specifics of what the occasion was or what the commission was and find the poem within the poem. So that has also happened. But yeah.
00:34:38
Speaker
Yeah, there's one in this collection, but I think for like Bacardi Rum or something, right? That you, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Bacardi. Yeah. I have an example, which is owned by, yeah, it's owned by Bacardi and, and that, uh, that, that was an interesting, they, they've awful commissioned a play about the family, the story of the family. I say it's about the rum, but it's really about, um, it's largely about the story of,
00:35:05
Speaker
of the family that owned Havana Club and their story of exile. And so the poem is centric to the idea of exilic existence. That's a tongue twister.
00:35:20
Speaker
A lot of us as writers, we all harbor our own insecurities that we have to work our way through, be it in early, middle, late stages of drafts or even just afterward. It's an industry fraught with neuroses and insecurities. For you, what are some insecurities that you wrestle with and those kind of demons so you can get to the good stuff and get work
Inaugural Poet Experience
00:35:44
Speaker
done?
00:35:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's my demons and my angels at the same time. But as a working class immigrant, gay kid, I guess, but more so working class and immigrant. I don't know. I think that defined my aesthetic in some ways. And as a kid that didn't have access to the arts and wasn't, you know.
00:36:03
Speaker
I wasn't in a family of art appreciators or anything like that. I didn't even know anything about American art or arts or humanities. My parents didn't even know who Robert Frost was or the Rolling Stones for that matter. I think it shaped my study that I always wanted to write poems that were accessible.
00:36:28
Speaker
Well, really, I can't write any other way because I'm not that kind of artist, that kind of esoteric artist. And I do believe fundamentally that I don't think accessibility and complexity are antonyms. To me, my job, I suppose, is in some ways to do the work to distill things so that there's a power in it and the poem meets you wherever you're at, whether
00:36:53
Speaker
whether you're in seventh grade or whether you're a university professor or a critic. But anyway, my demons are like, oh, I want to be really academic and esoteric like all these other poets that I know. And there's a lot of different poets. But sometimes I feel less than because I think sometimes I think my work may not be taken as seriously by reviewers and sort of the academic world.
00:37:22
Speaker
because they're deceivingly excessive and because they are about subject matters that are, I think, you know, not rarefied. So I don't know if that's all in my head, but that's constantly in me. But then again,
00:37:38
Speaker
This is the space that I chose. I remember writing more than 15 years ago some goals, which I do every once in like every few years. And one of my goals, I was thinking of myself as being a poet of the people like that's my self view. And so when you think about the
00:37:56
Speaker
I don't know if it's energetic or if whatever it is, but being presidential in all report is one of the most public moment for poetry in the entire United States. People think I'm the US Port Laureate still. I'm like, that's a whole other thing, people. And so I love that poetry. That platform has allowed me to take poetry to the most unlikely places
00:38:19
Speaker
And in a way, I feel like that's been part of my self-imposed mission or mission I was sort of created or been drawn to. You know, I've read poetry at the FDIC, Silicon Valley, at Google. I mean, the weirder to the place, the more I'm there, all sorts of like,
00:38:40
Speaker
nonprofit organizations and advocacy groups um gosh like i you know the usda so like i'm from many of these people it's the first time they've ever even met or heard a living poet or even been to a poetry reading so i get to be that person and sort of dispel their fears or myths or or misunderstandings about poetry and
00:39:01
Speaker
But yeah, I always feel like I'm not, I'm not taken as seriously by the establishment, so to speak. And like this new book, I'm like, I told my agent, what does it take to get a new, I mean, I want to
00:39:17
Speaker
a damn, like, National Humanities Medal. What does it take for my book to get reviewed, like, in the New York Times or, God, at least the Boston Globe or the Chicago Tribune or something? And, you know, maybe it's the opposite effect. Maybe it's like I've gotten too much attention so far. Like, well, he's already got a medal. What the hell do you need us for? I don't know. But, yeah, I constantly wrestle with that. That is a really bad thing for me.
00:39:45
Speaker
But as they say, you can't be anything but what you are. At what point did you realize that you were maybe on a short list of poets to be the inaugural poet for President Obama's second inauguration?
00:40:03
Speaker
Um, no, there there's, there's no shortlist or anything. There's no, there's not even an application. There's no, they just call you. They call you and you have to be up there and within a month reading a poem to 40 million people. So a million people in front of you and 40 million on T well, globally. Uh, so, uh, it was, it's interesting because, um, yeah, and, and it's, it's not something that every president does. So it's not like, you know, we're,
00:40:33
Speaker
You know, unlike the Port Laureate, which is from the Library of Congress, which is the legislative branch. And that appointment is every two years, every year. And then there's an extension. So people are like, oh, who's going to be the next US Port Laureate? Yeah, it's completely out of the blue. Completely unexpected. Same thing with the Humanities Medal. I mean, they call you. You don't call them.
00:41:02
Speaker
Yeah, that's incredible. So when you're up there reading, you're in front of a ton of people live, and of course you just know in the back of your head there's millions of people watching, how do you clear the mechanism so you try to, as best you can, turn it into just another poetry reading? Oh, yeah, just another. Just another poetry reading. It's interesting.
00:41:31
Speaker
You know, the other thing is kind of serving in that role was a bit isolating because there, well, now there's only three people alive that have ever experienced that. And I mean, who do you call? Hey, hey, last time you wrote a poem for the inauguration, what was that like? So what did you do? Like, I did speak a little bit to Elizabeth Alexander, but you're also in the throes of just having to write these
00:41:59
Speaker
They asked me to write three poems, and they chose the one I read. After that, the media frenzy. So you're like, there's not really a lot of time. But anyway, so it can be a little isolating. But what happened to me was there was so much, again, rush. And just when I was sitting there waiting to be called up to the podium, it was really the first time I had actually been able to take it all in and breathe and say, whoa, this is it, until that point.
00:42:28
Speaker
It was just this and that and the logistics. I mean, you didn't have to buy like tons of clothes. Like I was living in Maine. I hadn't worn a suit in like 15 years, you know? So what do you wear it in August? So much like to do and like, and so finally it hits me and I'm sitting with my mother there who is, um, um,
00:42:49
Speaker
who I chose because she, as an immigrant and all her sacrifices and her insistence on education and leaving her entire family behind in Cuba, I realized my story would not have been possible without her. So that was a little bit grounding, realizing my mother, who grew up in a dirt floor home, is here, steps from the president. And here we are. We belong here.
00:43:16
Speaker
The other thing was that in the inauguration, I had never been to an inauguration either. There is this sense of reverence. It's almost something sacred that you realize you're kind of in service to something larger than yourself. It's bigger than the president. It's bigger than, it's bigger than Beyonce sung the national anthem. And you can feel it. I mean, there, it really does signify, I mean, it really does symbolize the essence of a democracy. And
00:43:45
Speaker
More so than dumb fourth of july parades. I'm sorry, but like this is like and just those people as witness like That made me that abated my eagle because it's the eagle that thinks it's all about you Right and you have to be perfect and you have to you know Outshine everything and like no, this is by the time I they call me up. I wanted to do this I wanted to read this poem already um in service so so I think that was part of it the mindset there's also
00:44:15
Speaker
Maybe it's not even that complicated, but it was just something that was too big to fail. Your ego's like, don't even try me. All I was praying is I wouldn't trip, but I wouldn't get dizzy and vomit or just freak out. Roses are red, violets are blue, Obama loves you, me too. Good night.
00:44:45
Speaker
There was also one beautiful gesture which, which to me was a surprise but I don't know why it was a prize but maybe, but when I go up to the podium, both the president vice president stand up and shake my hand and like that little gesture which, you know, felt like they were presenting me to my country, not like
00:45:05
Speaker
not like, oh, read a poem for the king, you know, like, and they literally and figuratively felt like they had my back because I had one, each of them were sitting right behind me, one on each side. So that was, that gave me a little sort of a little nudge. And that was nice. And then the other thing was that
00:45:28
Speaker
Gloria Stefan sent word through my PR agent all the time, sent a message, a beautiful message. And she said, you know, don't run away from this. Like this is going to be a once in a lifetime thing. Embrace it. And that helped me too. If you look at the video, I kind of look out over the crowd for about a couple of seconds. I know, don't run away from it. And I was like,
00:45:54
Speaker
Yeah, this is it. All those little things helped, I think. That's amazing. In reading your latest collection too, there are several moments where you talk about the death of your father. Then towards the end, I think you get into some other moments about potentially just your own body, your own death. I wonder as
00:46:19
Speaker
someone who's now a middle-aged poet, what your relationship to mortality might be and just in the way you metabolize it in what I've read here and maybe how you're thinking about it.
Writing During the Pandemic
00:46:32
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a that's really a big part of the book, or where the genesis of all these poems came from. A lot of this was written during the pandemic. And I never thought the pandemic affected me. I got so tired of that question. And like, how has the pandemic affected your writing? I'm like, I don't know. I'm sitting here by my desk by myself writing in a small town in Maine. I don't see people for weeks at a time anyway. Right.
00:46:57
Speaker
have to make up something oh it's really affecting me you know like it was like Tuesday who cares like yeah but anyway it was affecting me in some ways because as I always say my poems are smarter than me like they they still keep on teaching me after I write what I'm really feeling and so the poems really started becoming about it's not so much death but just about
00:47:22
Speaker
I'll call it a series of surrenders. There's the surrendering of the ego that is the one that wants to find home and live happily ever after. There's the surrender of that insatiable thirst for a place and a sense of belonging. I've been through so many iterations of that and knowing that that's
00:47:47
Speaker
in a way, home is a state of mind for now. So there was that kind of death, I call it, you know, series of little mortalities, right?
00:47:54
Speaker
There's also the letting go and the new poems in the latter half of letting go of all the inherited trauma of exile of my parents and my grandmother and her verbal abuse as a homophobic caretaker, primary caretaker. So there's also that letting go and then
00:48:20
Speaker
And then yeah, just in a way these poems have helped me accept my mortality in a way because as you mentioned middle age where I'm starting to really think about that and also not so much my own dying but you know we just went to a wedding the other day and like
00:48:37
Speaker
all the older relatives, they're gone. You start realizing what happens when my friends start going, when we get to that age. So it's not a downer. I think there's a beauty in just accepting that and knowing that. And I think there's also, in the first part of the New Poems, there's also surrender to my art, to saying this is a kind of home that I've never
00:49:03
Speaker
really explored that sense of being in community and in conversation with other poets, with other writers, with other artists. And that was a kind of other dimension to that. But yeah, my father's life just stands record. Yeah, my father died when I was 22. And at 22, you don't really have, you know,
00:49:25
Speaker
an adult relationship with your parents. And so my poetry, in a way, is a way of, he was obviously, I mean, not obviously, but he was an emotionally handicapped man, which is partially of that generation and just, you know, not very communicative. And so I used my poetry to take whatever little sliver of something that I remember of him and sort of recreate him or to talk to him.
00:49:49
Speaker
Um, but it's really interesting because I I am 55 when this book comes out And my dad died at 55 and i've always wondered about that age, you know survivor's guilt or something, you know, there's something supposedly happens to you when you like live longer, but um Yeah, and it doesn't help that I drink too much coffee and still smoke cigarettes so So that's all but the pandemic or the pandemic too, right? Like you really were facing like
00:50:17
Speaker
shit, I could die. Like, you know, through no fault of my own, you know, like, I had never been that close to a real fear of death. And again, even my, and even those around me, right? Like, I was, I was in Miami, I teach and I just, I, and I was temporarily living, living with my mother.
00:50:37
Speaker
And I was just freaked out that I would infect her because I still had to be out on the road. And I just got in a car and drove back to Maine and saying goodbye to my mother, not knowing if that's the last time I would ever see her. That's crazy. Well, I think we've all had those moments of the pandemic, those thoughts. So I think all that made it into that book. And I think also what happens at 55 is not just mortality, but it's also
00:51:04
Speaker
you get to a point in your life where you just, let me put it colloquially, like you're full of all the crap of life. You're just like, you know, you're just like, I don't care, you know, 55, like, I don't care, like enough, like, you know, that kind of letting go of things. You feel you've earned your place in this world and don't have to, in a sense, you know, harp or, you know, just,
00:51:33
Speaker
You have a different sense of accountability to yourself and to the world. And I think that's part of what these poems are doing.
00:51:41
Speaker
I love how you said earlier in our conversation, then I saw a recent story of you saying it, that as a poet, you've been writing one poem in some ways for your entire life. And just at what point did you kind of arrive at that when you saw, maybe you look behind you in the body of work, you're like, oh, OK, I can see the dots that are connecting all these together in some way.
00:52:11
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I've been trying to research where I got that from and I'm scared that maybe I just stole it from another boy or something. I want to say maybe it was
00:52:24
Speaker
Lorca? I don't know. I don't know anything. It was if I don't have some vague recollection of maybe I read that somewhere. But really, that's not important. What's important? When did that happen? You know, I think it's for me, it happened in my second book, the first book I wrote at my lunch hour, it was the easiest thing I ever did in my life. The easiest book I ever wrote. But also because I was in the in the graduate program. So I got it in Simon every week. Every week I had a poem.
00:52:50
Speaker
And like I said, that first assignment put me right on the path of here's what I care about. Here's the question. This is the theme of my work. And so every assignment I would, I would turn into something for me that made sense to me. And almost every, every assignment is a poem in that first book. The second book, talk about the ego was like, Oh, I don't want to write about palm trees anymore, being Cuban. I'm like, so over that, you know, I'm like, I want to be like,
00:53:20
Speaker
This next book is going to be brilliant. I'm going to win a Pulitzer Prize. I'm the youngest person I've ever won a Pulitzer Prize. I was going to write all this stuff about my journey from engineering to poetry. The book was called, one of the many dozens of bad titles was Bridge of Tongues, like once.
00:53:42
Speaker
And I was writing all these horrible poems that belonged in this brilliant book. Meanwhile, I was writing these other poems that, ah, that doesn't belong in the book. I'm going to just put that away. Ah, that sucks. That's not part of this genius book that I'm writing. So I had a draft of the manuscript, and I sent it to my mentor, my professor. He's like, nope.
00:54:05
Speaker
Not there. Sorry, buddy. And I thought, oh, shit. What do you mean? You're kidding me. This is brilliant. And then I looked at all those poems that I wasn't writing that belong in the book. I guess what they were all about.
00:54:18
Speaker
So I had poems there from other trips to Cuba, still thinking about my identity. I had poems about living in, I had moved temporarily to Connecticut, to Hartford, Connecticut for a job. I had never lived anywhere else in the world except Miami. So that culture shock and that sense of
00:54:41
Speaker
by myself, you know, complete sort of displacement and loneliness and not feeling attached to a place. And then also I started traveling a lot, but also all the poems are sort of questioning place and in a way, in a way I was sort of searching for home in all the wrong places, like so to speak, as the song goes. And so that's when I learned never run away from yourself.
00:55:06
Speaker
you know, don't insist I grow, but don't run away from the question. And that's when I realized, oh, yeah, this is, this is, it fell in my lap. Why am I rejecting this? It takes sometimes authors, you know, several books to really get what it is that is going to be their life's work. And like, and that's what I'm doing here. And in this book,
00:55:29
Speaker
is just yet another iteration of that. I'm in this sense now that I've never gained a home or lost a home, or found a home, or abandoned a home, but that home is really the psyche of home, that it's really all those places. It's all the sum of my experiences that I carry in me, hence the title, Homeland of My Body. I'm tired of that wild goose chase.
00:55:54
Speaker
It's all good. And ironically, I end up also sharing my time between Miami and Maine.
Reading & Reflecting on Poetry
00:56:02
Speaker
And so I'm sort of also in sort of these two spaces and they're all home and they're not home and they've been home and they will be home and they change. So yeah, I think that's, I think it was that
00:56:15
Speaker
That second book is I think for most poets I'll tell you the second book is the worst most horrible hardest book to write because And to publish because you know, your first book is like, oh you're a brand new author and there's a lot of contests publication contests for first books But not a lot for second books and so there are contests that are open so you're also putting your book in with like, you know the likes of
00:56:41
Speaker
It makes you rest in peace with Louis Glick. So it's like, what? Potential people that would end up winning Pulitzer Prizes. Well, you're seniors. People that had five or six books were still part of this way that poetry got published.
00:56:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's all well put to how, you know, through much of your your process and development as a writer, it's like you almost slingshot your way like away from yourself, away from who you are, only to realize that you had to come back to yourself in some kind of homecoming and you realize like, oh, it was it was there the whole time. I just I needed to just either surrender to it or just look, you know, except where I was in the first place.
00:57:27
Speaker
Yeah. And the challenge is also not to get static either, or not to let yourself explore that question in different dimensions of it, rather than writing the same poem 40 times, which is another thing about a manuscript. You want to have some kind of variety in terms of form, in terms of tone.
00:57:51
Speaker
so that it doesn't always feel like. So yeah, it's always that fine balance between getting too stuck, too stagnant, but also rejecting yourself. Nice. And I was hoping that maybe you might indulge me and read a poem or two of your choice that I would splice in somehow into this episode. If you're open to that, I'd love to get that on tape for listeners.
00:58:18
Speaker
Sure would love that. So, you know, one of the other interesting coincidences or serendipities is that I end up sharing my time between Miami but I end up living by choice.
00:58:34
Speaker
in the same little town. Well, it's not a little town. It is a little town, but it's in the middle of the metropolis of Greater Miami. But this was in the same town where I first bought an apartment and moved out of my mother's house and where I wrote my first book.
00:58:51
Speaker
It's like, what? This is crazy. And the town is called Surfside. And so this poem contemplates the return. Who am I now? What was I then? Have I moved? All those layers of like when you come back to a place, you're like, did anything happen? Am I still the same person or not? What parts have changed or not? So it's called Once Upon a Time. Sorry. I always say that. It's Upon a Time, Surfside, Miami.
00:59:18
Speaker
Once and once again I am, as I remember myself. Thirty years later I can still savour the sway of these palms fanning this same wind into syllables whispering.
00:59:30
Speaker
Good morning in my eyes, saving these todays when I can no longer hear how to live out this passion for breaking myself into poems like this. Like these waves that once upon a time are again my loyal loves still kissing my feet as I stroll this shore and glance back at my footprints, again washed away.
00:59:53
Speaker
the salty salve of these breezes I breathe living once again with all my joyous regrets for all I've done right or wrong.
01:00:03
Speaker
For all I am now, that is enough, yet not enough. For who I wanted to be once, still searching this sea, still facing this same mute horizon, I ask again, who am I? What should I do? The answer, as always, everything. Excellent.
01:00:28
Speaker
It's funny you picked that one. I read, I had highlighted in that poem too how I love the line of breaking myself into poems like this. Like to me that just, I don't know, the essence of sometimes being a writer too is just like taking, metabolizing your experience and then it's just like in this instance it's just like you shatter into this poem or you know in that moment, yeah.
01:00:54
Speaker
Yeah, there's a there's a you probably noticed there's a lot of poems here that are I wouldn't call them ours poeticos, but they're
01:01:00
Speaker
They are self-referential. And I think that's part of what I was saying earlier about my very art being a place I exist, as it happens in me. That is an experience. That is a way of being. So more than many other poems that I've written. So I'd like to read either you pick, maybe, why I needed to.
01:01:25
Speaker
which is the one that repeats because playing God, which is about playing with Legos, any of those tickle your fancy, or self to self, which is that sort of talking to myself in those little couplets, or the title poem. Yeah, maybe the title poem, that sounds germane.
01:01:52
Speaker
yeah any any yeah we can go with that one yeah yeah especially for listeners i think this is a a friendlier poem also for for the ear for the homeland of my body for my ears still these ears lullaby by madrid's reigns the day i was born into the tempest of my parents exile holding their lost cuba in their alarms along with me
01:02:22
Speaker
For my hands, still these hands, sculpting sand cancels, guarded by the seagulls and palm trees that raised me to reach for the sun, to be as confident as Miami's skyscrapers, rising as I did. For my feet, still these feet, wandering forever through my father's sugarcane fields,
01:02:44
Speaker
by the wind of his dead voice blowing with stories of the sweet-sour life his Machete earned for him, for me. For my lungs, still these lungs, breeding the scent of mangoes my mother peddled by dirt roads to pay for her schoolbooks, the dust in her eyes graced by the sea-green Caribbean still hemming the island of her life.
01:03:07
Speaker
For my eyes still these eyes peering back into the sparkling shore I left for the stark brick of New England, walls enclosing years of my loneliness, quiet as the snow-covered fields outside my window. For my hips still these hips swaying to carnival drums with a Brazilian lover whose samba pulsed through me, let me lust for the hills and valleys of his body
01:03:34
Speaker
only to let it all go. For my veins, still these veins coursing through me like the canals of a sinking city. The cobblestone maze of its streets lead me to lose myself in the echoes of my own footsteps. For my legs, still these legs, standing at the mouth of a volcano, kissing a man I'd fall in love with, fiery and gorgeous as a lava at our feet.
01:04:01
Speaker
As the sun sets above the home we build nested in the thick bones of northern pines. For my flesh, still this flesh, alive with all the places I've ever loved or lost, or have yet to find and to lose. This constant homeland of my body wherein all my homelands reside at once, as they will do
01:04:24
Speaker
until my body's memory disappears into the dust of my own dust. That was a good choice. It was kind of wrapped up everything we talked about. I think so, yeah.
01:04:39
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I love that. Well, Richard, I want to be mindful of your time. I love closing these conversations down by just asking the guest, you in this case, for a recommendation of some kind for the listeners. And that can just be anything you're excited about. And so I just extend that to you, what you might recommend for the listeners out there.
01:05:00
Speaker
In terms of a poet or? It could be a poet, it could be a brand of coffee or a fanny pack you've been tickled by. I mean, it's anything you're excited about. Oh gosh, let me think. I'm not that excited about these dates, I guess.
01:05:20
Speaker
Well, I guess I'm just gonna go with like, whatever. This is like a bad, this is like a bad Jeopardy answer. But like, what is a cruise ship? I haven't taken a vacation in about 12 years. And because I travel so much for my poetry, I
01:05:41
Speaker
Being at home was a luxury for me, so I realized that's still not relaxing. So I'm finally taking a 10-day cruise when the semester ends. And so I guess my recommendation is a cruise, but in general, take time to relax.
01:05:57
Speaker
I mean really relaxed. I'm just completely gonna disconnect and I love cruises because I was cruising since I was a little kid and I'm so excited because I haven't been in a cruise in so long and I just I get giddy. I'm waiting counting down the days to like and like check in already for the for the cruise and like I've looked at the website like 80 times and like done virtual tours of the boat. That's amazing. So I
01:06:22
Speaker
So yeah, take time for yourself, I guess, is my recommendation. Oh, fantastic. Well, this was so great, Richard. And I just want to just thank you so much for the time coming on, talking craft, and for the amazing work you've done. And this is really a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate it. Well, thanks. And thanks for supporting the work. And I must say, you got a great voice. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. So you're the right business there. Thank you, Reddit.
01:06:54
Speaker
that's
01:07:10
Speaker
with more coming, and it's a matter of being able to squirrel away an entire day to edit and do all the things, like this riveting parting shot you're about to hear. So I turned in a 555 page, 170,000 word draft to my first editor, an editor I'm paying to help me see what I can't see, and trim what I must trim.
01:07:37
Speaker
I haven't shared a word of this book with anybody. Frankly, I don't think it's fair to share a work in progress with a spouse. Don't put them into position to break your heart any more than they might already do on a daily, yearly, or... Oh, boy. Best to keep that firewall up. Anyway, since January 1,
01:07:58
Speaker
I had been going like seven days a week and largely just writing through the timeline. It was like early on it was maybe like 2000 words a day and then I had to go up to three and then like it got up to like 4000 through the first part of writing the book, which we'll call panic phase one. I was like, let's just say the worry.
01:08:24
Speaker
was that there wasn't gonna be enough freshness and new stuff to even hit my contractually obligated 85 to 95,000 words. So it was like, oh my God, can I even get there? And when I hit 85,000 and I knew I was roughly halfway through my timeline, we entered what I like to call panic phase two. The OMG,
01:08:51
Speaker
How will I ever get through the entire story in a reasonable amount of words and pages? Doing the math, it is not a reasonable amount of words or pages. It is an unreasonable amount because that's what we writers are good at, math. Doing that math, I'm about double my word count and I barely scratched the surface of the hundreds of hours of recordings that I meticulously went through.
01:09:18
Speaker
Well, I didn't even go through half of them, to be honest. But that's neither here nor there. I still have calls to make newspapers to browse, transcripts to clean up, and transcripts to reread and reread, so I don't forget a crucial detail that brings ever greater humanity and fullness to my guy.
01:09:38
Speaker
It's also time to consider that the promotional push is coming and what that's gonna be like and how best to handle that, how best to embrace it. So many of us bristle at the idea that we have to be our primary champion of our own work. Makes us feel like hucksters on the internet. I see firsthand the desperation and the plight of the author on an almost daily basis.
01:10:06
Speaker
One, I get bombarded by publicists and authors for this podcast. I try to honor as many as I can, but it's impossible to keep up. There's only so much I can read and only so many spots available on the calendar. If I'm lucky in a good year, I publish 52 a year. 12 of those go to the activist. So that leaves 40 authors. A handful of those are always going to be repeats.
01:10:31
Speaker
So yeah, there's a finite amount of spots, at least for this show. And then you see on threads or Instagram, the only two socials I dance with, and authors are just, to me, it just feels like they're going about it wrong. And I say that because nothing anybody does on social media makes me care. You can share your pre-order link all you want, but that doesn't excite me in the least, unless I'm like a super fan.
01:10:57
Speaker
I'm also an odd bird, but what I see more than anything on social media is writers talking to writers and writers trying to sell their books to other writers.
01:11:10
Speaker
who are desperately also trying to sell their books to writers. Easier said than done, but the writer of a certain book has to take their book to where the readers are. Now all writers are readers, at least they should be, but not all readers are writers, so you have to meet them where they are. Again, I'm not saying that's easy. I don't really hang out on Facebook, but I imagine there are Facebook groups.
01:11:39
Speaker
Where else are there? I don't know. I'm not the authority here. I just know what doesn't work for me and what I see out there that annoys me. My big thing, as many of you know, is to do as much as possible outside the influence of the algorithm.
01:11:56
Speaker
Your link on, let's say, Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or threads or wherever you're hanging out, it just gets gobbled up and buried. It just doesn't work. My thing is you just publish like crazy as widely as possible.
01:12:17
Speaker
always with a link back to your newsletter or blog. You know, what can be repurposed from your manuscript? What expertise can you share from the experience of writing your book? Unless and until your book famous, just about no one is going to listen to you. You know, Bowen, George Saunders, or now like Susan Arlene, who just started a sub stack, suddenly people are like flocking. They just run in for all the answers.
01:12:46
Speaker
I guess you have to remind yourself that everyone at one time or another was blissfully anonymous. Their writerly fame was earned, and then that reputation can be leveraged for greater audience share and that sliver of waning attention. You know, I don't do guest posts on my website, but like Jane Friedman does, Bullet Journal does. I imagine there are many others as well, like prominent blogs and websites that will
01:13:10
Speaker
Take on a well crafted post and then you can kind of leverage that audience to help you out too. You know maybe a teeny tiny fraction of those people might really dig you and enroll in more of what you're doing. It's the old adage of a little and often over the long haul gets you where you want to go.
01:13:30
Speaker
kind of like in fitness. If you, you know, if you're lifting three to five days or exercising three to five days a week over 52 weeks, sleeping well and not eating or drinking junk in a year, I can guarantee you you'll probably feel better. Same with finances. Same with writing a book or starting a blog or a podcast. Little by little over time gives you the best chance at compounding that interest, man.
01:13:56
Speaker
People are chasing virality, but that's a slot machine mentality that will not yield you anything. And even if something does go viral, how sticky is that? It might feel good in a day if you get a bunch of people liking your stuff, but are any of those being converted into longtime fans? I don't think so.
01:14:16
Speaker
Marketing your own book is just about, or just as much about celebrating others as it is yourself. And I think a lot of people make that mistake too. They're constantly like, here's my thing out, here's my thing, here's my thing. And they always forget to be like, here's this person's thing, and this person's thing, and this person's thing. I think on a ratio of nine to one of someone else to use is a good ratio. Just my own math.
01:14:45
Speaker
Anyway, I'm gonna have a lot to say about these next phases of the book process and the marketing. The latter part, I think, is what writers struggle with the most and the ones that, the one topic where people, like, their ears are like, oh, okay, like, how can this help? And I'll aim to do what I can to contribute to that swamp of this ecosystem. So remember, CNFers,
01:15:15
Speaker
stay wild. And if you can't do, interview. See ya.
01:15:42
Speaker
you