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Alise Versella
3.6k Plays1 year ago
Alise Versella is a twice Pushcart nominated contributing writer for Rebelle Society and the author of the full length poetry collection When Wolves Become Birds (Golden Dragonfly Press 2021). Her chapbook Maenads of the 21st Century is due out with dancing girl press and her collection A Psalm for the Weary is out this April 2023 with Alien Buddha Press. She has been widely published in various magazine and journals as well as long listed for Palette Poetry's 2021 Sappho Prize and a nomination for Best of the Net.
You can find her at www.aliseversella.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Passion for Poetry
00:00:03
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host, Ken Zalante. Editor and producer, Peter Bauer.
00:00:18
Speaker
So we're speaking with Elise Purcella. This is Ken Volante with the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast. And Elise, as you might have seen, there's some poetry episodes. I personally adore poetry, and this is Poetry Friendly Zone, and I love great poets. So welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. It makes me so happy that you're a fan of poetry. Yeah, yeah.
Influences and Favorites
00:00:47
Speaker
geeky enough to have studied both old English and middle English poetry as an undergraduate in studies, which takes a particular mindset. What were some of your favorites? Well, you know, I got to tell you something strange about this since, yeah, let's just talk poetry. I had this professor who was at the University of Rhode Island and he
00:01:14
Speaker
his approach was was really different right so we're reading old and middle english poetry kind of like of the epic sort you know and fragments and all this and he was so uh deep on the intonation and the power of the cadence and none of the sounds that we almost studied it from uh a way of which my mind wouldn't
00:01:40
Speaker
necessarily want to think about it because I'd be like what are the concepts behind it like what is historical event is this referring to but we got pulled back all the time to how it sounded and he would recite it and it was such a
00:01:55
Speaker
That was such a different way of looking at it. So I became versed in a very different way early on in studying poetry. And of course, I had studied a lot of some of my favorite poets being Robert Frost. The contemporary poet I adore and I hope is on the show sometime, Morgan Parker, who's there are more beautiful things than Beyonce has one collection she had done.
00:02:24
Speaker
But I love that title. Yeah, yeah. And she has another title, which is Provocative Others People Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night. Ooh, damn. Yeah, yeah. Check out Morgan Parker. But we're talking about you, Elise Vercella.
Themes of Transformation
00:02:44
Speaker
And I found I was going into this episode and my mind shifts a little bit thinking more about poetry. I'm actually picky about poetry. I adore
00:02:55
Speaker
I adore really moving poetry, and it's like jazz for me. I'm picky about jazz, but when I hear jazz that I love, I feel the music more than other types, but only with particular things.
00:03:10
Speaker
I really enjoy your poetry and its power, and I've read When Wolves Become Birds. Yeah, I wanted you to talk about your poetry and talk about this book and transformation. Yes, oh man. So this book was written over the course of a good six years.
00:03:39
Speaker
In, I was leaving a job. I was leaving a boyfriend. My grandfather had died. So there was a lot of, I think I was about 25. So I was like at this very strange cusp of like, we're no longer like a teenager anymore. We're not like early twenties.
00:04:01
Speaker
I'm trying to move forward in a career and just becoming my own person and having lost that in the relationship that I was in. And so a lot of this book became a sense of grieving, not just like you would a death, but like an emotional death. And so grieving parts of myself as I'm growing up and maturing and figuring out what I really wanted from life.
00:04:31
Speaker
And it felt like at that moment in my life, I was very stuck. So once the poem started kind of taking shape, I found it to be like, like the myth of the werewolf. I kind of felt like I am trapped in this monstrous body. And how do I shed that skin and remind myself that, you know, I have so much opportunity if I just had the courage to take it.
00:05:02
Speaker
So then the book kind of became this whole, we're going from the wolf to a bird and reminding yourself that, you know, if you just unfurled your wings and like took off, you can have like whatever you're reaching for. So a lot of this book helped me get over a lot of stuff.
00:05:25
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm sorry to jump in right there, but one of the pieces I really pick up on is change and transformation. And I can personally relate to it in the way of, as I identified as an artist and creator, my entire life has been transformed.
00:05:53
Speaker
And the process of becoming or trying to understand can be such an active process for anybody, right? And loss, and loss, right, within that process. Yeah, and I feel like it's never really over. I kind of feel like you're always losing. I don't want it to sound like it's a terrible thing to lose
00:06:21
Speaker
I think you're losing layers of yourself and maybe the things that society puts on you or, you know, growing up things that your parents might put on you. So I think when we go through life, the transformation is always happening and just trying to become the best version of yourself.
00:06:44
Speaker
I had listened to a book
Art and Heartbreak
00:06:48
Speaker
recently. It was called Heartbreak by Florence Williams. And she's a writer I've been interested in. She's done books on the transformations that happen. If you go into the woods, what happens is physiologically, psychologically. So some kind of deep experiences. And what she studied was
00:07:09
Speaker
the study of heartbreak and the reality of that loss and how coming to terms with the importance enormity and seriousness of the traumatic event is really important and to talk about it in scientific terms
00:07:29
Speaker
just to realize what is happening and why that it doesn't feel like it goes away or why is it three years later and I'm still having this thought that feels pretty now, right? Stuff like that.
00:07:42
Speaker
And I think maybe like young teenage girls are always, people mock them in a sense, because it's like, it's just a boy, just get over it. And it's kind of, it is a very traumatic thing, especially like your first heartbreak, or even as you get older and like you've experienced different kinds of heartbreak.
00:08:04
Speaker
you know, different relationships and sometimes more dramatically than others. And that is a thing we all need space to heal. Like we have to allow people to go through that and not mock them for their grieving of it. Well, yeah, I, I, I completely agree. And well, even obviously I, I, I agree there, but even on, um,
00:08:29
Speaker
You know, just learning through that book heartbreak is that when you talk about the science and you talk about medical facts, the number one health risk for, you know, women of a certain age, maybe I don't want to quote anything, uh, not specific, but, you know, from like 30 to 60.
00:08:48
Speaker
is a divorce or a loss of a partner. The other indication, the other health risks pale in comparison to the loss. So even just looking as a crass scientific medical matter and not poetically, which of course is important, like we have to come to terms with
00:09:09
Speaker
when we've lost, it isn't just some shit that just happens happens to everybody yet does, but it's significant when it happens. Absolutely. I mean, I used to work at a I used to work on a senior assisted living when I was a teenager. And people would talk about, you know,
00:09:27
Speaker
people dying of broken hearts. Like if you're, you've now reached this age and your life partner passes, yeah, shortly after, usually you would see that shortly after the other half of that partnership passes away pretty quickly as well.
00:09:45
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you for when wolves become birds because, you know, the, what's, what's in there, I think can be really helpful. And again, pausing in acknowledging on things that aren't.
00:10:00
Speaker
flippant. They're the opposite of that. So I really enjoy talking about poetry.
Artistic Connections and Influences
00:10:14
Speaker
And one of the things I wanted to ask you, which is one of the bigger conceptual questions as a creator,
00:10:22
Speaker
as a writer, a poet, when did you see yourself as an artist, like as part of your identity? Is that a moment or a development? Or have you always been? What's your relationship with being an artist? So I feel like I've always in some form been artistic. And I do remember being very small, watching Bob Ross,
00:10:50
Speaker
and telling my grandparents, I'm going to be a painter one day. And like all the like you play the game of life. And it was like, I'm going to be the artist. So I felt like I thought I was going to be a painter. I still do paint when I'm not writing. But I think the first time I considered poetry
00:11:12
Speaker
you know when I was in the sixth grade so I was like 12 and like very angsty and I couldn't really formulate how I felt verbally so I would start writing it out and I really owe the whole
00:11:28
Speaker
poetry thing to my sophomore year creative writing teacher, Mrs. Jessup. She was the first one to be like, you know, I think you have some talent here, you should pursue this further. And so I had a lot of really great English teachers and Mrs. Jessup really kind of light that fire for me to consider it as something I could pursue.
00:11:57
Speaker
Yeah, let's take a moment. Thank you, Mrs. Jessup. Thank you. Absolutely. I saw her recently, too. I did a book signing at Thunder Road Books in Spring Lake, New Jersey, if anyone's looking to shop at their local bookstore. New Jersey Rep. Yes. I saw Mrs. Jessup there, and I hadn't seen her since probably graduation. And it was just so good to actually thank her in person.
00:12:27
Speaker
to be like, like, look at what you've helped me create, essentially. Yeah, thank you. I don't think that can be a more important statement. I've represented those in education for almost a quarter century. So those that look at you and help you see who you are in that way. Absolutely. Before you even know yourself.
00:12:56
Speaker
That's why you break one direction or the other. And for better or for worse, I mean, I think each narrative is different, but celebrating when somebody's like, Hey, this is what I see. This is why I see in you. And when you're younger, being like, well, I guess that's why I see myself. They see it in me too. So let's go. It is nice to have someone point out something that they see in you like that, you know, whatever it is. If someone, cause you just want to be seen when you're that age, you know,
00:13:26
Speaker
Yeah, I am. I wanted to tell you something, Elise, because I went back and I was trying to figure out because I'm out in the woods of Oregon and I love coming in contact with arts everywhere. I was like, how did I find? How did I find the lease? And I figured it out. I thank God this has been like. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, so well, it's good I brought it up because I just made I made a note in my my my art podcast journal.
00:13:56
Speaker
And the illustrator, Andrea, and I don't know how to pronounce her last name, H-R-N-J-A-K. Yes, yes, yes. Now, I had seen Andrea's illustrations for quite some time, and I believe they're just gorgeous and delicate. And it was right around that time, probably maybe when you announced your book or some of the lead up
00:14:23
Speaker
artwork or something and that caught my eye and then I started to connect with your poetry. Yeah. Listen, I love that so much because it's so, I kind of believe that the universe transpires for us a lot of the time. And when I was trying to find a cover image for this book, I had a very specific idea in my mind and I was just trying and hoping and praying that I could find something that would, you know,
00:14:52
Speaker
be what I saw in my head. And I found the image for the book. I found it on Pinterest. And I was like, who's the artist? And I found her. And I remember emailing her. And she said, how did you even find that that is such an old phone, like an old piece of art? She's like, let me at least rework the colors for you. Yeah, I'm like that, too. It doesn't matter where it was. Yeah.
00:15:22
Speaker
It was just so perfect. Like the image for the cover was exactly what I saw in my head. Like the transformation of a wolf and this woman and the owl. Cause I'm super obsessed with like birds of prey. Um, but yeah, Andrea did the best job. I love her. It's an odd combination. You know, it's my, my experience of how this comes together in my head is going to be unique in, but for me,
00:15:50
Speaker
It was very interesting to see the combination of like to come in contact with the writing within, but also that on the outside. And it's all, it's, I think it's a unique experience to see what is reflected visually. Um, you know, when somebody else does it somehow, and that's why you ask her for the images like it.
00:16:11
Speaker
It doesn't matter whether it's your notebook or whatever. It's the image that is the book. Can I have or buy or something, please? That's great. That's how I ran into your stuff. Very cool. Huge shout out to Andrea, bringing people together. Yeah, that's what it is. I'm telling you, it's arts organizing. I think that's what the whole project is.
00:16:38
Speaker
getting people together to celebrate the arts. And then after my contact with your poetry, then you have a fan going forward. And so it's a good connection. I'm going to jump to a big question. You dedicate a lot of time and attention and creativity towards what you do. The big question is, what is art?
00:17:08
Speaker
What is art? What is art? God, it's the thing that keeps us alive, isn't it? Yeah. It literally is. I mean, point blank, that's what it is. What would humanity be without art? I mean, if you look at society now, it's like, we need a lot more art, I think. I think people need art.
00:17:34
Speaker
A, for connection, because look at what it's done for us right now, like three people have been connected by art and poetry. You find people, like-minded people that you would not have otherwise come across. It makes you feel less lonely as a person, because a lot of the times, you know, life can be lonely, even if you are like surrounded by people, if they don't really understand
00:18:04
Speaker
what's in your heart and soul. And you wouldn't know that about someone without art. You know, the kind of movies that they watch, the kind of literature that they read, or the music that they listen to, what paintings speak to them, what kind of theater they like to attend. That's all how you get to know a person on a very deep level. So art is like empathy as well. It's how you put yourself in someone else's shoes.
Performance Inspiration
00:18:32
Speaker
You know, there are people
00:18:35
Speaker
across so many different borders, you would never know what their life is like and how could you unless they're giving you a piece of their art. You know, that's how you learn about people and cultures. I love asking a poet what is art. It's so lofty, but it really is just like no, it's Heather that keeps us here. Yeah, it's it's it's it's it's that.
00:19:05
Speaker
It's that feeling I, a lot of questions, a lot of answers to the question recently have been kind of like active verbs and I just keep noticing it. And I think it's tied to, I think it's tied to, um, energy, you know, like, um, you know, you'll be listeners. Um, Elise will be doing some reading some of her poems, uh, and that's going to be coming up in a bit, but you know, the,
00:19:30
Speaker
the energy of the performance, you know, the spoken word. I do a lot of music on the show. And I found that I talked about this a couple of times, but I found that when I've been stuck in the show or somehow because I've been doing it for four years, so there's different periods. But when I've been stuck, what I've done is I've tapped into the energy of the live performance or something that's happening on on the street to try to
00:20:00
Speaker
tap into some energy to kind of jolt me creatively. And that's what I like about the spoken word and poetry and music.
Poetic Readings
00:20:13
Speaker
Elise, did you want to read a couple poems? I guess I might have prompted that in my head more than anything. Absolutely. Yeah, what shall we do?
00:20:25
Speaker
two problems. You want me to start with two? Yeah, let's do two and then let's do one to lead us out. Okay. All right. So this first one is called For All the Dreams I Still Have Yet to Dream and All the Dreams Once Had. I said, I want to cast spells, mother. Let the pearls drip forth from the oyster shell of my mouth. I want to taste the cities, mother.
00:20:53
Speaker
Hold the earth like a lover holds my hips above the ledge of his. I won't hold secrets and empty promises. I want blood oath and lightning strikes, terror and the shriek of a nightmare, jolting me alive, nocturnal birds once the day sets.
00:21:08
Speaker
watch the girls as they set their masks down embrace our dark nights and vulnerability that i still cry and shout so you could hear me over the sting in my throat the sting of this salt these crusting waves i swear to god one day i'm going to drown in but for now i'm learning how to float
00:21:26
Speaker
how to sip of love and not get drunk. Oh, how the tide wants to pull me back with her, but I am still a stubborn woman, mother. I am learning how to take a fighter stance. On shifting plates, I try to pirouette and I am graceless, but thank God for that. Thank God for my vulgar mouth and my too small hands. They hold this bleeding organ like an offering to know God at all but my younger self, that holy ghost, haunting skeletal halls that creak a little more upon waking now.
00:21:56
Speaker
Kneecaps remember what it was like to run hunched howling because it hurt to learn I must become a beast. Some of us never set the pelt for wings. Forget we were made for skies and we make our own heavens from the pearly gates of our teeth. A smile that fights back.
00:22:12
Speaker
like a dog in the junkyard, a warning behind a chain link fence. We were all born in the gutter with our eyes full of stars. Mother, maybe we did fall to earth from Mars. But I still believe in what we've been building here, even if we burn it down daily. Aren't we all witches set to burn at the stake daily, Joan of Arc? And maybe I am crazy. Crazy as my feet levitate from the grass as I dance and spin righteous divine like a dervish. I spin in the grass and the do what's my cheeks. I think I'm crying.
00:22:42
Speaker
For all the lost souls who once held mad dreams, foaming like the seashore at the mouth of their bays, there is no jetty jagged enough to break my wake. Oh, I am dreaming, mother. Do not attempt to wake me. There's always this, I have this in my head. I'm going to say it out loud, Elise.
00:23:05
Speaker
What do you say after the poetry performance as a podcast host? There's this, uh, I was going to, I came up with, uh, wicked cool, um, being, being from out east. I, you know, um, uh, that's a fantastic, you have, uh, you have one more for us now, right? Yes. Yes. I've been told this is a fan of favor. I do have a lot of people come up to me and tell me that this is the one that hits them.
00:23:34
Speaker
So shout out to my dear friend Becky, who always says she loves this poem. I do believe she said she wanted it tattooed on her. I know, right? What a compliment. This is called, I will edit manuscripts, but I will not edit myself.
00:23:55
Speaker
I do not wish for snapshots, I want the whole damn panorama. The extended cut, the edited scroll you let roll forth from the typewriter like a carpet you do not have pulled out from under you. And I want the dust you swept under that carpet.
Impact of Teachers
00:24:10
Speaker
When your mother wasn't looking, when you grew tired of the nagging, after you unpacked all the boxes of your body, you got closed up, taped shut because you'd been so afraid to unpack your baggage and buy furniture with sturdy legs.
00:24:24
Speaker
legs that will dent the carpet. Legs that might scratch that hardwood if you don't first lay down some velvet to buffer it. I say refuse all buffers, like bowling without bumpers, like sometimes I don't care if my ball lies in the gutter screen guttural.
00:24:39
Speaker
If today you cracked the mirror and didn't like the imperfect reflection, scream if it makes you feel better because hawks don't consider the eardrums of earthworms. They scream because they are flying high and they are hunting. They are taking all the opportunity has laid before them because God gave them claws. So do not retract yours.
00:24:59
Speaker
We have deemed decline inhumane. So what if you scratch a little, if you sting a little, if the blood reminds the spineless, you are still here. Thank you, Elise. Thank you for the poetry. Very, very, very wonderful. I live
00:25:23
Speaker
poetry performance and the energy and you know as you would probably know but I'm remembering again is
00:25:32
Speaker
when you read poetry and then you hear that poetry and just how those words sound. Going back to how I was trained when I was much younger. Does that training stick or does it not? Wow. Your teacher reminds me of my English teacher, Mr. Hickman, because I feel like those two teachers would have gotten along very well. I got to tell you about this guy a little bit more.
Art's Societal Role
00:26:03
Speaker
his professor, Menzel. And this is an English lit, like I said, concentration in poetry. You probably knew everything in the universe, this guy. He had a kind of New York accent, a little bit of a draw and just a great announcement of like poetic phrases. And everything was dramatic, even when he lectured. And I was a freshman and he liked me.
00:26:30
Speaker
But he'd give me shit. Right. Just give me shit like like I was some punk kid or something. And he one day says in the back of classes, like two weeks into college, I asked some sort of question. He said, Mr. Volante. You're a freshman, aren't you?
00:26:52
Speaker
That was it. I was like, okay. I guess I got the point. Sorry. Sorry about that. I'll smarten up next time. That's the type of thing that can happen in your poetry classes. I was always set the right way by him though. Great intellect and
00:27:15
Speaker
and great poets. So now we had Mrs. Jessup to thank and thank you, Becky, as well. We got a thank you list. That's up in Becky going on. I'm a very lengthy thank you list, honestly. And I feel like that just goes to show how important community really is.
00:27:35
Speaker
Well, when you think about what you create and you start to think of maybe influences and people, and if your mind organizes it in that way, that's why your list is like, I got to thank these 36 folks who contributed the ideas of this in a conversation in 2017. I understand just thinking about that and organizing and acknowledging folks. I got a question connected to
00:28:03
Speaker
art itself, and it's along the lines of the role of art. And what you see is the role of art, and whether that role is different now, you know, as we record this in 2023, than it's been. So the role of art. Well, the role of art, now I'm just thinking about how we're protesting down in what is it Florida now, the
00:28:32
Speaker
David statue. So I'm kind of thinking we definitely need more art because we need to expand people's small little horizons and views. Just going back to empathy because I think the society is really lacking at this point how we're so
00:28:59
Speaker
self-centered in a sense that we cannot see how someone else might be living or breathing or walking through this world. But if you go through like art history, I kind of just get this sense of you can see how like the forefront of what was in people's minds, like I'm thinking like Renaissance art, like we had so many images of God and
00:29:28
Speaker
you know, religious iconography. You just go through history thinking, what did people paint about? What did people write about? You know, you're learning something about history from the people who lived it, which I feel is kind of different than if you're getting history from say a textbook or a political standpoint, because you might not, or the media in fact, because you wouldn't get like the whole
00:29:58
Speaker
story, but if you're getting it from the standpoint of the artists, you get more of a feeling of how people actually are living. So I think the role of art is to tell our stories, bring people together.
00:30:20
Speaker
Yeah, I think in thinking about art, one of the pieces I think a lot is about as an artist you can inhabit a different space and you can tempt and push your idea of freedom, of expression.
00:30:37
Speaker
In a way that can be limited, right? That we might want to be elegant. In an area where you can't do that in other places. You can't get the cover as a non-artist sometimes for some of the things you can do as an artist or what you wish to invoke.
00:30:56
Speaker
If the images you wish to show are disjointed and subversive, there's so much energy around what an artist might be able to do with that.
00:31:08
Speaker
I have the general beliefs that I don't accept basic fundamental conceptions of the society I live in and the reality in some of the categories that we use around race and how to, I have a complicated relationship with all that. And I think art has the potential to be an area of liberation and freedom in personal
00:31:38
Speaker
healing that That's where the power is like I can't I feel sometimes like if he looks at society as is and you try to operate within Yes, it's it's it's really it's really tough or if you're limited by what you expect the horizons to be do you find do you find in writing poetry you have a type of freedom that you might not be able to find other places and
00:32:04
Speaker
Yes, yes. And I think that goes back to me not always being able to verbalize how I feel or what I think. So writing the poem is such an easier, it's just so much easier for me to eloquently put down what I think and what I feel and how to process things. I've got a new book coming out, which was very heavily just deals with
00:32:32
Speaker
all of the traumatic things that have been going on in society since like 2020, but obviously before that, but it's a way to process everything. Um, with, and I think without censoring yourself, cause I feel like in some spaces, like you do, you might have to censor a little bit what you say.
00:32:58
Speaker
depending on where you are. Yeah, you recognize the audience. A lot of times. Yeah, definitely like. Yeah, there are definitely some people that, you know, like just even conversations with my parents, it's like, all right, this conversation, they're not going to, they're just not going to be able to hear this. They can't, you know, comprehend it. So, but I think in that regard, if I write a poem now,
00:33:28
Speaker
it's a little bit easier to ingest maybe. Like, especially if people have differing opinions on things. I think there's a way that art makes it a little bit more bite-sized, in a sense.
Reflections on Art's Purpose
00:33:46
Speaker
You could find some piece of it that everyone can relate to in some way. So you could bridge a gap, I feel, easier.
00:33:54
Speaker
with art as a way of communicating. It's a different way of communicating. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely I definitely jive with that. I want to ask you another big question so we get all the big questions out of the way or or looking at it a different way. We use the magic of all the big questions, you know, in the conversation. But of course, the show's title is a big question about creation or why things are is why is there something rather than nothing?
00:34:27
Speaker
That's such a heavy question, but one that I've been thinking about all week, honestly, because- It's not an evil laugh that I did when I showed up. No, I know. Because there's always got to be something. You have to as a person, especially, I think especially now, probably everyone for all time has had to find one thing
00:34:55
Speaker
that gets them up in the morning, that keeps them going. You know, there are some dark, heavy days that people experience and that nothingness, I mean, you can't give in to that. I think that's also why we have art and those connections with people brought to us by art, because you need to hold on to something. This life is very short and that nothingness feels like
00:35:22
Speaker
very daunting and bleak, you know, and so heavy, but just one little something, you know, it's it can be as simple as like a line and a poem that you just keep going back to when it gets you through like those really bad days.
00:35:43
Speaker
Yeah, that's why there's something rather than nothing. I think of the songs you hold on to, right? That whole concept, the songs that saved your life, the song, you know, like, um, you know, yeah, poetry saved my life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think when we look at, at these areas and how important they are, there's a fight in my head against kind of.
00:36:10
Speaker
non-thought through ideas of what artists do and who they are in society, kind of like caricatures or stereotypes. And those can be funny a little bit, right? If you're in the right mood for them. But I think there's something unique and special about the artist and being able to pull from different areas where
00:36:35
Speaker
I think we come so specialized in the capitalist society around skills and the value of skills that when you look at
00:36:43
Speaker
what artists do. And when you talk to them and it's like, oh, you know, I paint and I do poetry and I can also write business articles and I can also sing. And I used to play the piano, but I haven't played in three years. I also do. You know what I mean? And it's like, yeah, like it feels like you're really, you know, doing something. And that's the energy I've I've connected to in our and talking to other artists is like,
00:37:13
Speaker
the getting up on and over the getting through. Well, and that's probably why I dig your poetry too. So, right. I feel like, cause like you think about, I don't know, not to knock anybody else's career paths or anything, but I'm always thinking back to like the height of the pandemic and in quarantine and the things that were getting people through was art.
00:37:42
Speaker
your music, the books, you know, the whatever movies you were able to stream. Like that is how we got through a very difficult lonely time.
00:37:55
Speaker
Like keeping your company You're in a different voice I was talking to a couple guests recently and just hearing a little bit of the phenomena of listening to a podcast or maybe like individual artists working in you know isolation or you know having to
00:38:14
Speaker
Crank stuff out in a particular way and listen into like podcast or creative podcast to be like like there's people having a conversation about like this whole creating thing that I'm doing around me and it was like kind of a cool concept an idea to To kind of create that type of environment, you know, so It's necessary
00:38:39
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Um, at least where, where, where does everybody go to find, you know, like the things you create, uh, where you are live online. Tell us the title of the new book, all that stuff. Yes. So you could find me at Elise over Stella.com.
00:38:58
Speaker
I'm very active on Instagram. So you could find me at Elise zero X on Instagram. Um, but my website has all of the social media links, um, where you can find the books. Um, I will even let you slide into the DMS. And if you wanted a signed copy, that's how you get it. I got one of those. I got one of those. So I will take
00:39:26
Speaker
solicitations for books through direct message. But that is all I will take. Solicitations for books. It's an open trade of which I've been engaged in for a long time. It's good. But the new book is called Assam for the Weary. It is due out with Alien Buddha Press. We're getting that to you as quickly as possible.
00:39:54
Speaker
You sound to be in that moment. It's gonna, it's, it will be, it will arise. It's happening. There are like so many, um, that will be arriving at some point this year. Oh gosh. Uh, well, um, no, it's, it's, it's really great to talk to, uh, Elise and I gotta tell you, um,
00:40:14
Speaker
I don't know if there's a challenge or something on my part. I've had a lot of guests out from Jersey and New York. I mean like four or five in the last month. I've only had one from up in Massachusetts, Boston area. I'm from Rhode Island and I'm just saying out loud, I'm not trying to create a competition, but you know.
00:40:37
Speaker
New Yorkers are pulling ahead. But it is great to talk to you and to talk poetry. I've had poets Joanna Valenti and Bunkang Twan and Imran Sainab on the show. And it's
00:41:00
Speaker
and more. And it's a nice thing for me to connect to. And I just wanted to thank you for your time, Elise. Thank you for your time. Poets love talking poetry with people, so. I noticed. Any opportunity I have.
00:41:19
Speaker
I notice for everybody out there, poets love to talk about poetry if you give them the opportunity. Please give us the opportunity. This is obviously poetry-friendly territory, but my brain goes in too many different directions, so there's a finite
00:41:39
Speaker
amount of poetry slot. But yeah, thank you so much. And look forward to to the new book. And, you know, thanks for talking about, you know, you know, big things like healing and connecting through the arts and getting through. I know that message has resonance today in the future. Really appreciate you.
00:42:08
Speaker
Thank you so much This is something rather than nothing