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Episode 136—J. Hope Stein on Being a Not-So-Secret Secret Poet, the Sheer Love of Writing, and ‘Little Astronaut’
126 Plays6 years ago
J. Hope Stein, author of the book of poems "Little Astronaut", stopped by the show to talk about her wonderful writing and how she draws power from the sheer act of doing. Follow her on Twitter @poetrycrush and follow me and the show @BrendanOMeara and @CNFPod!
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
The Creative Nonfiction Podcast is sponsored by Goucher College's Master of Fine Arts in Nonfiction. The Goucher MFA is a two-year, low residency program. Online classes let you learn from anywhere, while on-campus residencies allow you
00:00:15
Speaker
to hone your craft with accomplishmenters who have pulled surprises and best-selling books to their names. The program boasts a nationwide network of students, faculty, and alumni. Which has published 140 books and counting, you'll get opportunities to meet literary agents and learn the ins and outs of the publishing journey.
00:00:38
Speaker
visit goucher.edu forward slash nonfiction to start your journey now. Take your writing to the next level and go from hopeful to published in Goucher's MFA program for nonfiction. Where should I start friend? When in doubt, riff.
00:01:01
Speaker
Ooh, gotta love that riff. It always feels good to bust out a heavy tune to a 4-4 beat.
Host Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:01:07
Speaker
Hey, this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I talk to badass writers, filmmakers, and producers about the art and craft of telling true stories. I try and unpack their origin stories to see how they became the artists they are. You might even learn a thing or two worth applying to your own work. I'm your host, Brendan O'Mara.
00:01:30
Speaker
I've got J. Hope Stein for you today. Her latest book of poetry is titled A Little Astronaut, and it is about early motherhood. I don't have nor want children. This is a spouse approved sentence by the way, and I love this little book about being a parent. That should tell you something right there. But first, make sure you subscribe in all the right places. And if you're digging the show,
00:01:56
Speaker
Hit me up on Twitter at Brendan O'Mara and at cnfpod. That way we can continue the conversation on social media. My favorite. By all means follow the show on Facebook too and head over to BrendanO'Mara.com, that's me, for show notes and to sign up for my monthly newsletter.
00:02:15
Speaker
Once a month, no spam. Can't beat that. More and more of you are signing up each day. Keep it up, man. Let's build our own social network and subvert the algorithm. Rage against the algorithm, man. Be forewarned, friend. This interview is largely unedited. I say largely because I did clip out the very,
Guest's Poetry Journey
00:02:36
Speaker
very beginning of it.
00:02:38
Speaker
the
00:02:59
Speaker
As you know, I publish on CNF Friday, so I'm throwing this up without my usual edit. Meaning I had no time to cut out my stupid voice. You just have to deal. Thankfully, Jen picked up my slack.
00:03:13
Speaker
So, J. Hope Stein, as she is called, is the author of Occasionally I Remove Your Brain Through Your Nose. Her poems, she has a poem after all, can be found in The New Yorker, that thing, Poetry International, Lenny Letter, In the Shape of a Human Body I Am Visiting the Earth, poems from far and wide.
00:03:37
Speaker
She has three pieces in Mike Burbigula's, I can never pronounce his last name, Burbiglias, the new one, which was on Broadway from October 25th, 2018 to January 20th, 2019, just ended, and is an additional writer on that show.
00:03:58
Speaker
So Jen is at Poetry Crush on Twitter, and you can visit her website, JHopeStein.WordPress.com to learn more about her work and to buy her awesome book. That's it.
Discussion on Writing Privacy
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Speaker
Yeah, let's go. Let's do this. It's time. Episode 100, 36. It's JHopeStein. Enjoy.
00:04:24
Speaker
To start things off, I had read that on a little bio tag of yours at one point that it says, J. Hope Stein is a secret poet who lives on an island made of plastic. She was once a tetrapod. So where did that come from? I think that comes from my deep need to stay secret. And I was actually
00:04:51
Speaker
kind of secret in the sense that I didn't really tell my friends or family anything about my work or what name I was writing under until about a year ago, almost a year ago. So except for my husband and a couple of poet friends, I wasn't really sharing my work at all. For instance, my parents had no idea what I was writing under or anything like that.
00:05:21
Speaker
I think, and I also just like, I have a hard time writing bios, so I just felt like that was the closest thing to like what I was feeling that I was. And what about you and your work did you want to keep secret and shrouded? I think that I was, I think I just needed to sort of develop and incubate for a little while and I wanted to do it without a lot of
00:05:51
Speaker
too much judgment, too many voices in my head and I just sort of felt like I needed to spend some years just like seeing what I was doing and sort of seeing where I wound up before I could share it with the people in my life. I also just didn't want to like take them down the path of like extreme rejection and like constant rejection and just the, you know, all the sort of, I just feel like there's, I don't know, there's so much
00:06:19
Speaker
Rejection and when you first start writing and there's so much figuring things out. I just didn't want to bother anybody with it I just wanted to like keep it all to myself and not sort of burden anyone with it except my husband Spouses take the brunt of that rejection hammer, don't they? Yeah, and it's just the rejection to it's just like I don't know I was just experimenting with a lot of different things and and voices and
00:06:46
Speaker
I don't know. I just felt like I needed space. I just created a lot of space for myself. For whatever reason, I felt like that's what I needed. Did you feel like you needed to bank a certain degree of success for you to sort of then come out to your friends and family as this not-so-secret poet anymore? Probably for my parents, yes.
00:07:11
Speaker
But there's friends that I still haven't told that I've been friends with, like, all my whole life, and haven't really confronted about it. But it's also just, like, not that big of a deal. Like, it's a big deal in my head, but I don't think anybody else cares about that plan, where they're like, oh, we're waiting to find out this big secret. But I don't know. Like, I just think, I think it might just have been sort of like an identity thing that I was searching for, and I just needed to do it on my own.
00:07:40
Speaker
And I don't know. It's hard to explain. I mean, I just think I'm generally a private person. So my nature is to hide. I would just hide my manuscripts around the house and hide work everywhere around the house. I'd never keep anything laying out that was mine. I would just make sure everything was always hidden.
00:08:05
Speaker
So yeah. Your mother was involved in music, correct?
Influence of Family on Creativity
00:08:15
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So what did you glean from her growing up? I know your parents split up when you were very young, but in the time that you spent with your mother, what did you, growing up, what did you learn from her? And then we can learn from your father as well. Yeah, my mom is...
00:08:34
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is like kind of a rock star in that like she and my dad split up when I was like two and so she had to like figure out how to um survive and she got like a low-level job at um I think a record company um like as an assistant or something or receptionist or and I think it was an assistant and then she just worked her way up and then by the time I was
00:08:59
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In high school, she was the president of this music publishing company called Williamson Music, which publishes Gershwin, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Irving Berlin. At the time, she also had Elvis Presley's catalog too.
00:09:22
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You know, I would kind of travel with her sometimes. Like when I was in college, I would like, I like met her in Nashville at a party at like Priscilla Presley's, like I'm like with Priscilla Presley and like the Elvis Presley estate. And like, I'd go backstage with her at concerts. At one point in my childhood, she was representing YouTube and REM. So I'd go to those concerts. And so she was just like really powerful. I mean, she still is, but um,
00:09:48
Speaker
You know, as a figure, when I was younger, she was just extremely powerful, extremely competent, badass. Wow. That's amazing. You had the cool mom. Yeah. And now she's retired, and she's a grandma, and that's super cool, too, to see that side of her, which is totally different. Not the executive in charge, but just a grandma, which is kind of cool, too. Yeah.
00:10:18
Speaker
So yeah, I think she's been extremely influential and I got to see a lot through just being her daughter and being around her and just seeing
00:10:29
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a woman can do anything. It never occurred to me, actually, that a woman couldn't do anything. That actually came much later for me to even understand that, that a woman couldn't do a thing. Because she was so successful, and she was the most powerful person I knew, so it didn't even occur to me that a woman isn't powerful.
00:10:52
Speaker
And when you would spend Sundays with your father, you guys would drive around listening to mixtapes or CDs. And that also is sort of really like participated in like the development of my soul and like what I like to listen to and a lot of the lyrics that meant a lot to me. Like he introduced me to Dylan.
00:11:22
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And he introduced me just to a lot of music and I would like borrow his music and borrow like everybody's music, like my mom's music and my stepfather's music and my dad's music. Um, but yeah, like we, I could sort of feel the power of music when I was with him and sort of like this deep way, because he would have these, like, I would not, like we were both really quiet people were similar disposition. And so.
00:11:46
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there's just something that I felt was communicated just by like listening to what he's listening to that week. I'd be like, okay, I can kind of feel him, feel him just by what he's listening to this week kind of thing. So I think that made a big impression on me.
00:12:01
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And I think with poetry in particular as a writing form that it lends itself to musicality. So would you say your upbringing of listening to the music with your dad as a form of communication and then being around your mom, that that truly was the lead domino that ultimately led you to become the poet you are today? I think so. And I also just like
00:12:29
Speaker
My parents split up when I was two and I spent a lot of time by myself and I really like spending time by myself and I think that just kind of, I think as a writer you spend a lot of time by yourself and I don't ever feel lonely or anything. I really like it and I feel like it's just so a part of who I am and I think that the space that I was given was fantastic for my soul in terms of I would listen to a lot of music on my own and just
00:12:59
Speaker
space out and think and I would just really just do just I just like developed a real inner monologue very early because of it. And I think that that's fantastic. Like, I think a lot of times people are like, Oh, no, it's so it's too bad that your parents put up. But I'm like, I don't know, because I think they're happier. And I'm happy. I think I'm happy that I have that space in a way. So but yeah, like,
00:13:25
Speaker
And my mom would have a lot of songwriters that she represented. And so I was able to sort of see a little glimpse of that world and what a songwriter was. And there was so much respect in my household for songwriters. So yeah, I think that did develop.
00:13:44
Speaker
Something inside me yeah, it sounds like based based on what you're saying that the internal life that you learn to be That you were just comfortable with early on and then of course as you developed as an adult and as a as an artist in secret so to speak it appears that
00:14:02
Speaker
Unlike a lot of people who might get into the arts who want to be visible and have that outward validation, it seems like you have an internal satisfaction with just doing the work itself. Would you say that's true? And if it's true, where do you think that comes from?
Writing for Self vs. External Validation
00:14:22
Speaker
That's so true. I just love writing so much. It's like I just feel so lucky that I get to. And I think part of it is because after
00:14:30
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I graduated college, I had to get a job like everyone else and work and there's not really a lot of time to write when you're trying to pay your bills.
00:14:42
Speaker
And so, you know, years went by, like a decade went by where I just couldn't do it as much as I wanted to, or I was doing it, but it wasn't really very good. I had like a marketing job and I would like secretly write poems and like print them and then like run to the printer really fast and get it before anybody saw it. And then, you know, but, and I really enjoyed my work and I enjoyed the people I worked with, but, um, it wasn't really until I met my husband. Um, and he is a writer and an artist where I really like,
00:15:13
Speaker
And he sort of helped me see that that's what I should be focused on. And so I think that just transitioning back from having this life as sort of a working person in an office back to spending a lot more time on my writing, because I kind of gave my heart and soul to my office job for like 10 years, at least.
00:15:40
Speaker
And I'm, and I'm glad that I did that. And I learned a lot, but, um, I think that I was just so happy to, to, to take more time to write. So I just like really appreciated it. And I didn't really know that I would ever be able to, to pursue it so much and spend so much time, spend so much of my day on it. And it just makes me so happy. So it just sort of doesn't matter in a way.
00:16:03
Speaker
And also just because I've had so much rejection, it doesn't really matter. Like I sort of forgot about the outside world completely. And I'm just really interested in just like writing and that's kind of, and just like sharing ideas with my friends and other artists that I know and reading their work and they're reading my work. And just like, I just love writing so much that I almost like,
00:16:28
Speaker
live in a little bit of a bubble and maybe that's the little plastic island bio that I wrote. But I just sort of generate work and I have so much work that I haven't published and I feel great about it. I just want to keep writing and writing and writing, yeah.
00:16:42
Speaker
And you brought up the R word and something I always love to talk about with various people on the continuum of writer visibility and success and everyone deals with rejection.
Handling Rejection in Writing
00:16:57
Speaker
And at one point in an interview I read, when you had submitted one particular chat book, I think it was
00:17:03
Speaker
I don't remember which one, but it was the one by Dancing Girl Press and it was the first place you had sent it and you admitted you were very lucky that they picked it up. But you're like, but don't worry, I have a lovely history of rejection. So how do you deal with rejection and stay in the fight so you can keep writing and keep submitting? I don't submit a lot anymore. That's part of it. And I just really focus on the writing.
00:17:33
Speaker
Because I have so much that I'm trying to get out, I feel an urgency just to keep writing and writing. And I feel like, I don't know, I've been lucky because I've had a couple of people here and there ask me for work. And so that's been enough just to get me through just having something published here and there. But yeah, the rejection. I think there was a time where I wrote my first book
00:18:01
Speaker
which was called The Inventor's Last Breath, which has never been published. And it's a book I'm really proud of, and I think it'll be published someday. And I sort of have an idea about it that I want to work on that is going to kind of transition it a little bit from what it is. So I kind of tell myself it's OK that it's not published because I have an idea for it that I think can like sort of put it in a different place than it is right now. But anyway, I think it's some of the best work that I've ever done.
00:18:32
Speaker
And I remember sending it to all the poetry contests and thinking I might win the poetry contest and then getting rejections that are super, that doesn't even feel like anybody even looked at it kind of rejection or doesn't even feel like it was even a consideration kind of thing. And just feeling so sad about it for like,
00:18:55
Speaker
Probably three years, I'd say, but I don't, but I wouldn't send to a contest like that again. And they don't think that, I don't know. I don't know why I just don't.
00:19:09
Speaker
I'm not sure about those contests in relation to my work. I'm just not sure that's the best sort of match. But I do remember just being, I don't know, I don't have, I think that if you get a lot of rejections, then just keep sending out, I think is what people say. Because I remember Shane McCray, who's one of my favorite poets, posted something on Facebook one day saying that he has work that was gonna be in Poetry Magazine.
00:19:36
Speaker
And I was like, and he was like, after sending for 20 years, like, I finally got work in poetry magazine. I was like, Oh, my God, you sent for 20 years. And he's such a brilliant writer. And I'm like, you didn't take your work for 20 years. That's insane. I just couldn't believe it. So I mean, all the, all the people I respect, I mean, have been through it. And it's just part of it. And yeah, you can't take it personally. I think that like,
00:20:00
Speaker
it's supposed to be like a rejection, it's supposed to be an invitation to like submit again or something like that. Like that's the attitude you're supposed to have. Um, so yeah, I try not to take it personally. I don't think it's personal. And I also just think there's so much great work out there. Um, and I don't know, I just feel like there's enough, there's enough places and like it'll get out there eventually. It's sort of my attitude right now. Um,
00:20:27
Speaker
And it's great for me to see other people's work. I genuinely am like, oh, that's what they took instead of mine. That's a pretty great thing. So I'm OK. That's an amazing attitude. And that's something I always love asking people about as well is how you cope or handle with competition or jealousy among peers.
00:20:51
Speaker
If that's a feeling that you experience at all, I wonder how you have come to this point where if you see someone published, I will say in place if you say because of a contest and you're like, oh, wow, that's pretty damn good. They made the right decision. Like, how did you get to that point of being comfortable being in that pool instead of in sometimes, you know, being defeated, so to speak? Yeah, I mean,
00:21:20
Speaker
There's a Copper Canyon Press. It was one of the few presses that actually like I sent them my manuscript and they wrote me back this really personal letter saying that they weren't going to publish it, but they wish they could kind of thing. And then I saw that they went with like Jericho Brown and I'm like, well, yeah, Jericho Brown's amazing. I mean, I'm like, I'm like, he's so incredible. Like, of course you should publish Jericho Brown.
00:21:43
Speaker
You know, and then there's of course other times where, and this is like back when I used to submit, I don't submit anymore, but when I used to submit, there was one time, but this is how I made a friend, Jonathan Stuckey, who is the publisher of Black Ocean.
00:21:58
Speaker
Press and he's a wonderful poet also He won like a contest like a chapbook contest that I was like a finalist in and I met him and I was like, oh you took my spot like I was like really competitive but that we became great friends and he's a great writer and of course, I'm like, yeah, I want that spot but I mean
00:22:17
Speaker
I'm really glad that he got it too. Like I said, there's just so much good work out there. There's so many different reasons why a press will pick something over something else. If you start to take it personally, you'll just go crazy. I just had to keep writing and writing and writing.
00:22:39
Speaker
take that out of my equation, which is what I've done to take that out of my equation. I don't know if that's the best advice. I think that other good advice is just to keep submitting. But I think the most important thing is just keep writing. Yeah, I think that's brilliant advice, because that's really all you have control over is your effort. So that's where you should put your energies, really. Yeah, I have a friend who sends me her work all the time.
00:23:07
Speaker
Her name is Rina Mostron and she's like one of the most brilliant writers I've ever read and she'll like knock out like a novel every few months or something. She's in like or like a play or a book of poetry. She's so prolific and it's such high level work and she doesn't publish it and I'm just like one day somebody's just gonna like publish your like treasure trove of work and it's just great like
00:23:28
Speaker
Sometimes I think of it as like, these are the writing years and they're publishing years later or something like that. And I do have a line in my new book that I'm working on, which says, you can publish when your dad said the tree.
Balancing Writing with Life
00:23:41
Speaker
And I feel like there's so few things you can do when you're dad and that's one of them, but you can't write when you're dad and you can't like be a good mother and a good friend and a good wife or husband or whatever. So I feel like,
00:23:56
Speaker
I don't know. It's a priority thing. And I think like what keeps me up at night is how much I want to write and how much I want to get out and how am I going to have enough time to figure out these pieces that I'm trying to work on. And how did you arrive at the poem Central Maze, which you landed in the New Yorker, I believe in January 2018.
Writing Process and Motherhood
00:24:20
Speaker
So. Yeah, so I'm working on a
00:24:25
Speaker
But the book that I'm working on and I've been working on it for a long time. Um, and I think I'll be working on it for a long time. Um, it's called notes from the plastic Island. Oh, there we go. Oh yeah, there we are more plastic. And it's, um, it's about an Island made of plastic where there's no more food. And so people have to breastfeed each other to survive. And, um, it,
00:24:50
Speaker
I guess it happened when I was basically breastfeeding my daughter, um, around the clock and she was just like, they call like a vampire feeder. So she would just like want to feed all the time. And I was like delirious. So I just started writing that while I was with her, like sort of cooped up for a year, just like breastfeeding her. And, um, and so I'm still working on that. And so yeah, that one piece, I had read a bunch of those pieces, um, at a reading,
00:25:17
Speaker
in New York and Paul Muldoon was there when he was the Poetry Editor of the New Yorker and he asked me for that piece. But there's a large collection, then that's part of it, that I'm sort of sifting through right now and working on different aspects of. And so yeah, it's about, it's like sort of, yeah, it's right now the manuscript is about over 400 pages. And so I'm just trying to get through it and sort of
00:25:47
Speaker
figure out what's going to stay and what's going to go and what needs to be elaborated on and thought through. And so, yeah, that's kind of my big project I've been working on for a while. And then I wrote Little Astronaut on the side while I've been working on that. And both of them involve a lot of breastfeeding because of spraying out of the same movement in my house. So, so, yeah, so and that was pretty and that was when I showed my parents, my work for the first time was the New Yorker.
00:26:17
Speaker
Oh, that's a good, uh, that's a good thing. Here you go, guys. I just feel like if your parents are alive and you're in the New Yorker, you have to show it to them. It's not fair, you know, so I had to show it to them. Um, and so, yeah, that was really amazing. I mean, I couldn't believe that was like a dream. Yeah. Yeah.
00:26:35
Speaker
I read that and you said that in much of my work, I don't start with language like other poets do. I start with rules and form and structure because my tendency is for all urge. So when I give my urges a structure to live within, it ultimately helps me find the tension. So how did you arrive at that as your approach? I'm not sure, but
00:27:04
Speaker
I don't know how I got there exactly, but it just seemed like if, like the central maze poem from the New Yorker, I have several poems like written in that form and in that voice. And so I think that sometimes I get like, um, I get to sort of like, um, like a, like a whole world comes to me. And so it needs to be expressed in a certain way and that world needs rules. And, and so like with central maze,
00:27:33
Speaker
Um, it's written with the ellipsis and like, it's written like there's a certain like fragmentation and a certain, um, rhythm to it. And there's just a certain way that that character speaks. And that just helps me, um, frame what I'm going to say in a way that like, if I don't have some rules, then it's just.
00:27:55
Speaker
it's going to be all over the place. And so the rules just help keep, sort of teach the, teach the reader how they're going to read the thing that I'm making because there's so many other aspects of it that might be, I would say like avant garde or outside of the box. So I think it needs some kind of boxing or some kind of packaging so that, um, so, so a reader can find their way through it. Um, and it also just helps me write it to sort of have these rules and sort of,
00:28:23
Speaker
It helps me hear it a little bit better. But I'd say what the way that things come to me is sort of a looping. Like I have this looping thought that keeps coming. And so it can be linguistic, but it's usually like there is some language involved, but it's also like a looping. There's something that's just driving me nuts. That's just looping in my brain and I have to write it out in my
00:28:51
Speaker
My poems tend to sort of loop around each other a little bit in terms of like there's repetition with variations to sort of try to get at something. And that's sort of how I hear it in my head. Like something's looping in my head with like variation in language and it's trying to arrive at something. I don't know if it does arrive at something, but it tries to.
00:29:13
Speaker
I also read that you said that I'm more of a listener than a writer. And where does that come from? And how did you learn that skill? I don't know. I really like to listen.
00:29:28
Speaker
Like I even like to listen to movies or like, like sometimes my husband's on the phone and he's like, do you want me to go in the other room? And I'm like, no, I'm like listening. Like you sound like the ocean to me. Like there's something about hearing, hearing the patterns of somebody on the phone or patterns of inside a really good film. There's just like these beautiful patterns. It's almost like a symphony or something. Um, and so I just, and or like, I love to listen to like, if I'm upstairs, I like to listen to like,
00:29:57
Speaker
just the idea that people are downstairs talking, whether it's like my husband and my daughter, just like the sound of them talking, not what they're saying, but just the sound of them talking to each other and the different, I don't know, there's something about it that I find very comforting and that I get a lot from. There was like, there's, you know, my husband's a filmmaker and I've helped him with a couple of his projects. And there was one time where we were doing a screening
00:30:24
Speaker
of the movie don't think twice for some people to give notes and to sort of work some things out. And I couldn't be in the room because my daughter, you know, was just crying. And so I was in the next room. And I listened to it through the wall and gave notes that way that like notes that actually like me like changed the beginning of the film. And it's almost like listening to it helped me find the rhythm of the film or so than actually watching the film in a way. So I don't know there's I think that people just have different senses like my I don't think my
00:30:54
Speaker
My sense of, my vision is that great. But my sense of hearing, I think, is very sensitive. And I just get a lot from it somehow. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, I think.
00:31:09
Speaker
Did I answer the question? I forgot what the question was. Oh yeah, about being more of a listener than a writer. You identify more as that, but then you're of course able to, if you're able to internalize so much and not just hear things but really digest, then you're able to translate that through your taste and your filter onto the page and with your particular style.
00:31:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting. I don't know if I would agree with that statement now about myself because I feel like I'm ranting so much. But yeah, I understand what I meant by that. That's my primary sense, I would say. It was listening and then just spacing out. Yeah.
00:31:51
Speaker
I also, what I loved about this one particular thing I read, especially for your Edison manuscript, that you visited a lot of archival work, archival newspapers, and kind of really dove deep into that. And I wonder, how does research find its way into your work, and how does research look to you, and how much fun do you have in that pool of information?
Research for Unpublished Work
00:32:20
Speaker
I had such a great time writing that and doing that research. And that's the first book I was talking about, The Inventors Last Breath, that hasn't been published yet, although I've published a lot of pieces of it. And the bulk of it was published in Poetry International, like last year, but it hasn't been a book yet. But it's based on Thomas Edison and this
00:32:40
Speaker
article that I had read about him. I don't know how I came across it. I can't remember now, but there but the way that people would talk about him is like he's like some kind of magician because he like came up with like the light bulb and like sound recording sound and this idea that you could hear someone's voice after they're dead is was just such a
00:33:01
Speaker
revelation, this idea that you could capture somebody's voice. And that really appealed to me. The other thing is that the image that really stuck in my head and what the book is named for is that his last breath was supposedly saved in a test tube, which is on display at a museum in Detroit. And I don't know. Yeah, I think research does come into play with me and I love going to museums and I do
00:33:31
Speaker
When I go to museums, the images that I see, like the test tube that supposedly has this last breath or just like, yeah, like reading the other archive newspapers, I would go every day to the library. Instead of reading like the newspapers of our time, I would just like read those newspapers every day from his time period.
00:33:52
Speaker
I don't know. It just like transported me just like the way they would talk about anything, even like a snowstorm. Like I would just like eat it up. I would be like, Oh my gosh, it snowed. It was April. They didn't know it was going to snow and like everybody was stranded. And like, I just was so captivated just by, I don't know what it was. Just like being able to pretend that I was a citizen from another time period and like reading their newspaper every day. Um,
00:34:21
Speaker
I feel like a hundred years from now, people might look back on some archive internet stuff and be like, oh, they were doing surveys to see what kind of Muppet character that best represented their personality. What a weird people. I don't think they'll be kind to us. I mean, I, yeah, and I mean, and now I read, you know, now I'm news obsessed. I like stay up all night watching news and I shouldn't, I should be sleeping. Um, but, uh,
00:34:49
Speaker
But yeah, now I'm very much reading the newspapers of our time. And I cannot imagine what will be said about our time on Earth. I can't imagine. I don't think they're going to find us too intelligent. But yeah, I don't think they'll be that kind to us. And I don't think they should be. But yeah, I mean, that was research. And then I went to Edison's factory in Jersey, which was
00:35:20
Speaker
such a great experience after writing about him for like two or three years like every day I went to his factory and it was just like magical to me to be there and just to see like what he had set up and just I think I was just really interested in this idea of creation and looking at creation through an Edison like figure and so yeah that book's really special to me because I feel like I learned to write while writing that book and so um
00:35:50
Speaker
So yeah, my heart is very in that book. So yeah, and it's really, really different than the work I'm doing right now, I think. But in a good way, different. I think it's like, I definitely consider that my early work. And what I'm doing now is just, it definitely feels a little bit evolved away from that. And I like that, that I'm sort of pursuing different things.
00:36:12
Speaker
If you had to describe how they differ in your style from a younger writer to who you are now, how would you articulate the change in style? I think that the work in that book, because I was writing about a certain time period, I was kind of reading a lot of the works of those time periods, like I was reading a lot of Whitman.
00:36:38
Speaker
And I think that in that sense, I was trying to be Whitman. I was trying to write like him and emulate sort of his style and kind of like his energy. And I think that right now, I'm not really trying to emulate anybody. I'm just sort of more grounded in sort of just being myself. But I think what came out when I was
00:37:08
Speaker
doing that. And that's, again, sort of like I had a lot of rules and ideas about what could how like how the characters could talk in that book and how they couldn't. It's much more formal. It's much more of a formal type of poetry. And it was really hard to write. I mean, it was really deeply like based in linguistics and deeply like every little sound and line is like very, very, very specific.
00:37:37
Speaker
My work right now is a little bit, it breathes a little bit more, it's a little bit more natural talk, it's a little bit more how I talk versus how my characters in this environment through sort of a Whitman-esque lens would talk, if that makes sense.
00:37:57
Speaker
How does reading out loud in front of an audience maybe inform the way you transcribe what's in your head onto the page, if that makes any sense? Yeah. It helps a lot. And sometimes I forget to do it. And that's when my work
00:38:17
Speaker
is probably not as musical as it should be. And so I really do need to, I do need to read it out loud. Sometimes I read it to my daughter. Sometimes my husband will read it back to me and that really helps me. But the works that are in my first book, In Adventure's Last Breath, they're just like, they're like
00:38:37
Speaker
they're very musical and they're very based in the musicality of poetry. And so all of those pieces I read over and over and over and over until every single like note was like what I felt was what it needed to be, was in the right place. But now yeah, I think reading it out loud is really important. And it does inform me like,
00:39:05
Speaker
Yeah, you just can tell when something's missing. If you're missing a beat, it is the musicality part of it. If you're missing a sound or that something just sounds off or something like that. But for me, it really helps. And I'm like somebody who doesn't print a lot. I actually reward myself by printing. So I'll be like, OK, you've written this much. You've done enough. You get to print. And so I think that I don't
00:39:35
Speaker
reads as much because I don't print as much. But once I print it, I read it out loud. And that's kind of part of the process. And then I use my hand, my printout version, and I work from that for a while and make notes on it and write new things. And then I go back into the computer and then I'm into the computer for a while and I'm not printing or reading. I'm just writing, writing, writing. And then I print it out when I feel like I've achieved enough. And then I read it, read it, read it.
00:40:01
Speaker
So yeah, that's kind of like the process that I have going right now somehow. And given that you are a very creative and artistic person and so is your husband, what's it like being in a household of two very creative people?
00:40:23
Speaker
I guess in terms of getting like your, your work, your work done or, you know, if there's any of that kind of, you know, we're a tension of, you know, two creatives in a house. We both love working so much that there's not a lot of tension about it. There's a lot of like joy around the work and we're just in constant dialogue about everything that we're both working on. That's great. Yeah. And so.
00:40:54
Speaker
And like, yeah, it's, I mean, it's just, I love it. It's wonderful. I can't find, I can't find any like downside to it. It's just like, it's fantastic. And like, he's just, he's just, I think both of us just love talking to artists about their work. And so we love talking to each other about our work. And we're both like, try to be as generous
00:41:21
Speaker
of spirit as possible when talking to any writer or author who's trying to talk to us about their work. And so we do that for each other. But yeah, Mike is one of the most generous of spirit, like artists, but I mean, he's just, I mean, he's, he's so like, he's so available intellectually and emotionally, in terms of people talking through their work and giving notes on work. And I don't know, he's just a very curious,
00:41:50
Speaker
artist and so he's fantastic to have him around. I think in the beginning when we were first married I actually hid my work from him for a while because I think maybe because you know I was so impressed by his work and I wanted to like catch up to like get my work to a place where I was like proud to show it to him the way I was with my parents.
00:42:14
Speaker
but we're way past that now. He sees everything that it works on. I basically just like sent him like, I also sent him an email just being like, here's a little thing I wrote today. And he always stops and reads it no matter what. And it's really, he's very generous in that way. But yeah, we're just in constant dialogue about everything. Creative lies. And our daughter's pretty creative too. Like she's,
00:42:41
Speaker
She's like always making things and cutting things out and gluing them to things. So yeah, we're all just like always kind of working on our things. That's cool. How did you develop your own writing practice and your routine around the work so you can feel nice at the end of the day that you accomplished something you wanted to get done in the morning or something?
Daily Writing Routine
00:43:08
Speaker
Yeah, well, I mean, I get up early with Una and take her to school. And then from there, I just go and do like a first writing session right away. So if all goes well by like 10 a.m., I have something new or something figured out or like some problem solved that I was trying to figure out. And so once that happens by 10 a.m., I'm like, I feel good. And I'm like, OK, like if I don't do anything the rest of the day, this is great. You know, so that's kind of where I'm at.
00:43:38
Speaker
Um, Mike has a totally different schedule. I mean, he has a lot of obligations. He was on Broadway every night and, you know, doing eight shows a week. So he has a totally different, um, set of things. And it all depends on what project he's working on. But, um, but for me, my, I basically try to get whatever I can get done before 10 AM. And then, you know, if I'm lucky, it'll go until my daughter gets out of school, which is three. Um,
00:44:06
Speaker
or like 230 till I have to pick her up. And like, that's when I was doing Little Astronaut. That's how I was writing. I was basically writing all day until I picked her up. And then, um, yeah. And like, I just have a lot of things to work on. Like I have a lot of assignments for myself because I have that 400 page manuscript and I have another manuscript. Little Astronaut is actually a lot longer. Um,
00:44:32
Speaker
but I just published a little piece of it, but I have a much longer manuscript. And so I have to give myself assignments, like get through these 10 pages this week, get through these 10 pages next week, you know, that kind of thing, read this book this week. So I have a lot, I have like a lot to, it's very like, I lay out like what I need to do every day, every week, every month, every year. Like I try to plan it out and then change it as things go.
00:44:58
Speaker
And so much about Little Astronaut is just so charming and just so deeply lovable because of the immense love that you have for your daughter and your family throughout the whole manuscript. And I just want to pick out a couple things to talk about that really just stuck out to me. And one in particular was the cup.
00:45:25
Speaker
And with your daughter drinking just a cup of water, but you could sense that pang of jealousy that she was getting, the joy of the nourishment from this cup that she once had from your body. And where did that come from?
00:45:44
Speaker
You know, that's just what I felt. I felt that one day and wrote it down. Um, the way a lot of little astronaut came together was, um, me just writing down like one thing a day and then coming back and looking at it later and not trying too hard because it was, a lot of it was written like during the first year. Well, yeah, first year or two. And then there wasn't a lot of time for editing them. So I was like,
00:46:12
Speaker
just writing something down and I think I wrote that down one day. I know that feeling like when you're talking about it, I still feel this pang of like, oh God, yeah. I don't know why it hurts, but it doesn't, it shouldn't, like I'm happy for her too. But I think that, yeah, that image of her drinking a cup and I think
00:46:33
Speaker
you know, drinking a cup when you're still so small, so the cup kind of takes over your whole face in a way, that image. And so you just see the child's eyes. And it's so similar to like what it was like when she was like a baby and like feeding off of me, like I could just like see her eyes and like the rest of her was just kind of like hidden behind my boob. And so I don't know. Yeah, there's just like, it was just, it's like these flashes, these flash images.
00:47:02
Speaker
And so, yeah, I would just try to write down the splash images. That piece came to me really easily and did not get edited that much because it's such a specific feeling I had. And with Morning Mommy, too, and this actually alludes to something you said earlier about how sometimes you like to loop things. Or just looking at this one particular line, I'm like, oh, that kind of feels loopy in the sense that Jen was talking about.
00:47:31
Speaker
But it was this part where you're in bed, you're sick, and your daughter waves this magic wand. And you don't want to get up. But because I can't let her magic not work, I am up. Or because her magic works. And in there, there's that loop, I think. Well, at least I feel it. But also this fear of disappointment as a parent, I imagine. Is that where this particular one stemmed from for you? Yeah. And I also think it's just like,
00:48:01
Speaker
Like no one can get me out of bed except her, you know? And like, I think the same for Mike. Like she gets Mike out of bed by just saying like, daddy, do you want some cereal? Like, and then he'll be like, yes, I do. I want some cereal. Like, even though he like planned on like sleeping another hour or something, but she just has this way. And I think kids just have this way of like motivating you in this and find like, I just was surprised at the changes in myself that I would like.
00:48:28
Speaker
the sort of things that would go through my mind like I am going to like get my body out of bed because She said she has a magic wand. There's no other reason and I have to meet her at that logic and I don't know like and there's another one in there about how like I let her like pull me out of bed and I like because I want her because I I want her to be strong or because I because she or because she is strong and I think I
00:48:55
Speaker
And I think because that's how it feels, like I feel like there's a strength or magic that's like pulling me in this way and like tugging me in this way that I've never experienced before. I'm just being completely like controlled by these forces that are new to me. And so, um, and I, I wanted to capture that.
00:49:16
Speaker
And late in the book, too, there's this one passage that I thought was really touching but also kind of inherently painful. You write that the only feeling better than watching her come towards me is watching her ditch me at parties and playgrounds, ditch me with the sparkle of a college senior.
00:49:36
Speaker
And talk about the strength that it takes to let them go. But it must also hurt a lot, too, that they're running away from you with such joy, in a way. Yeah. I mean, she ditches me so fast. But then we are so, so, so close. We are so extremely close. It's just like we have the greatest times.
00:50:00
Speaker
The second we are at something where there's somebody more fun, it's just like, bam. I'm literally invisible. She can't even hear my voice speak. I'll be like, don't jump off that. She can't hear me. She's just gone. She's so gone. And it's amazing. I don't know. It's amazing to watch. And yeah, when I was pregnant towards the end, they
00:50:24
Speaker
did this scam and they told me that she was like in position to be born and all of her organs were completely formed and I just like took a cab home from the doctor's office and I was like crying hysterically the whole time the poor cab driver like probably thought there was like something seriously wrong he was like I hope everything's okay like he was so nice and I get inside the house and and Mike was like oh my god what's wrong everything okay and I was just like bawling I couldn't get the words out and I was like
00:50:53
Speaker
she has to leave me to come to me or like I was just like so it's like so emotional this idea of like her like that she was like gonna leave my body but that she's gonna like come to me like all these like crazy thoughts of like I don't know it's just like this this like for me it's just been this really intense like push-pull of being so overwhelmed by like how she can grow on a day-to-day basis and like be her own person and I'm just like so happy for her but then also just like
00:51:23
Speaker
I'm like, she's ready to go to college practically, it feels like, in a way. I can see it so clearly, and I can see the glimpses of it, and I'm just like, wow, it's a very rich experience. And I'm probably more sensitive to it than other people, maybe. But I definitely feel it all, and it's incredible, but it is a rollercoaster.
00:51:45
Speaker
And in the process of writing something like a little astronaut or what you've been working on in the past, where do you feel most engaged and alive in that process?
Joy in the Creative Process
00:51:58
Speaker
I love, um, and this goes for like any work that I'm working on, whether I'm helping Mike with something or a friend with something or my own work, I love,
00:52:09
Speaker
the process of writing and editing and making the thing. Once it becomes a product, I lose interest entirely. I can barely, I almost like don't even acknowledge it once it's a product, but I'm only, I'm really like feel like the alive part is making it. It's just so exciting to me. It's so fun. It's like so alive. It can be anything. You can add a word and make it totally different.
00:52:37
Speaker
I don't know there. It's just so much fun to me. Um, but I do have a weird thing that like, and this is why I don't do a great job like promoting my work or like I didn't get it. I didn't even try to get reviews for a little astronaut or anything because I just wanted, I'm just working on my next thing already. And that's where I want to put my time. And I do, I don't know what it is. There's something about it. Like when it becomes a product, it's a little bit dead to me and I don't mean it to be that way, but I think it's just part of my overall philosophy is just like,
00:53:07
Speaker
being a friend, being a wife, being a mother, being a daughter, being a writer, these things are so alive to me. And you only get to do them when they're alive. And so, I don't know, that's sort of where I want to spend my hours.
00:53:22
Speaker
I think that's a wonderful place for us to maybe end what I hope is only our first conversation about you and your wonderful work going forward.
Where to Find the Guest's Work
00:53:32
Speaker
Where can people find you online, Jen, so they can get more familiar with your work if they're not already familiar with it? Oh my goodness. That's a great question. I guess on my website, would you think, you seem really familiar with that. I think my website, which is
00:53:50
Speaker
I don't actually know, but if you Google J. Hopestein, it'll come up. Yeah, I think at jhopestein.wordpress.com is your main hub. Exactly. Jhopestein.wordpress.com. Yeah, so whatever you just said is where it is. And then the other thing is I have a Twitter account, which is at Poetry Crush. And yeah, that's something. I think I have some updates there sometimes. See, I'm terrible at this part of it.
00:54:18
Speaker
Well, there's always, always room for, for improvement, but that's how we eventually connected. So you're not, you're not terribly inept at it. But yeah, people can buy a little astronaut. That's a thing. Um, if you go to my Twitter account, you could just click on it and buy a little astronaut, which is a short little book of poems about early motherhood. And three of the poems are in, um, the show, the new one, which just ended on Broadway, um, a couple of days ago. Um, but thank you so much for, um,
00:54:48
Speaker
for reading my work and taking the time. Oh, of course. The pleasure was all mine. Thanks for the endurance of going back and forth with me and setting up this time. This was a pleasure to get to speak to you about you and your work. And I hope when the next thing comes out, we can do this again. OK, sounds great. Thanks so much for having me. You got it, Jen. Take care.
00:55:15
Speaker
Did you make it this far, friend? I hope so. I put some effort into these outroes, so you better. I don't just cut and paste this shit, man. Don't you skip. Don't you dare move on to long form. Yeah, you. Thanks to Jen for the time. What a kind and thoughtful person, right? And just a... Just a kick-ass poet. Kick-ass poems from a kick-ass poet. Gotta love it. Follow her on Twitter, at Poetry Crush. Poetry Crush.
00:55:43
Speaker
Let's keep the conversation going on Twitter at Brendan O'Mara and at CNFpod. That's where you can tag me in the show and I'll see it and I'll say, what up? If you dig the show, link it up on the Twitter and maybe consider leaving an honest rating or a review on iTunes.
00:56:01
Speaker
I'd love to hit 100 ratings this year, but it starts with you. Yeah, you. If you had a podcast, I'd rate it. Okay, that's enough to borrow a phrase from my best friend Leslie Knope. It's been a long week and I'm gonna endorse 10 beers to my mouth. Hashtag dry enough, January. Have a CNF and great week and how could I forget if you can't do interview? See ya.