Season Finale: Lisa Cooper

[00:00:01] Speaker A: All right, welcome to Lutheran Answers. My name is Megan Maldonado and I'm on with Lisa Cooper. Lisa, nice to meet you. [00:00:08] Speaker B: Nice to meet you, too. [00:00:10] Speaker A: And I'm glad to talk with you today. We're going to talk about you, presumably, and also about this beautiful little volume of poetry, Hasty Corporeal Inc. I'm really excited. [00:00:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm so excited, too. [00:00:26] Speaker A: Before we dig into this, I know you've been on this podcast before, correct? [00:00:30] Speaker B: Yes. [00:00:31] Speaker A: Okay, so offer a brief introduction for those who have not yet for some reason watched your previous appearance. [00:00:40] Speaker B: Yes, I'm Lisa Cooper, most notably married to Jordan B. Cooper, the fellow with a beard who does other Lutheran podcast. [00:00:51] Speaker A: The beard, yeah, yeah, I know the beard. [00:00:53] Speaker B: Yeah, everyone knows him from the beard. Yeah. So most notably that I am a writer by trade. That's what I do professionally. I work as a copywriter and marketing specialist currently. But I also do a lot of, like, freelance writing and editing and all of that good stuff. And I'm a poet. That's why I'm here today, because they're talking about that last time I was on the program, I was talking a lot about, like, devotional writing and some of the other fun things that I do. So. So if you haven't listened to that, you could go check it out and it would be very different than this podcast. [00:01:29] Speaker A: So. Well, thank you. On that note, actually, you mentioned that you're a poet. Obvious to this. But you start off in your introduction, I believe, with a little anecdote from your childhood about, I believe, another work of poetry. How long have you been a poet, would you say? [00:01:49] Speaker B: Since I was really little. I've been writing like silly poems. Since I was really little, at least. Yeah. [00:01:57] Speaker A: What's a silly poem? [00:01:58] Speaker B: Probably like 6. 5. 6. Ever since I've been writing, I've been writing poetry. Like haiku. Haiku would be like, like, like little poems, acrostics that little kids do, you know, those kinds of things. Not like serious tormented, you know, more teen kind of poetry. At least not immediately, you know. You know, like teenagers write the most sappy, depressing poems. [00:02:26] Speaker A: Well, they're the most sappy, depressing people, honestly. [00:02:29] Speaker B: It's true. It's true. [00:02:31] Speaker A: But you. Would you say that there is. There's like real poetry? Is that when it is dealing with something, let's say serious. Is it when you get published that that's real poetry? Is it when you're using a certain kind of form, you. As a published poet? And I'm certainly not a published poet, although I'VE studied poetry. What would you say is like when your kind of poetic journey began in earnest? I guess. [00:03:01] Speaker B: I think, yeah, a poetic journey. Let's see. It began in earnest when I was probably in college, I think, studying. I studied literature as well. So we are both literature fans. Although I was more like Russian lit, Native American lit, not so much medieval. Sorry. Although interesting for sure. [00:03:27] Speaker A: Pandering, but continue. [00:03:30] Speaker B: But I. Yeah, that's when I really started diving into poetic forms. And that's when I got really excited about poetry more concretely. I think I had been writing poetry forever, but I don't think I was doing it with intention. And that's what I think is the difference. Not so much getting published, but doing it with some kind of purpose or intention behind it to convey something that is more important than just throwing words on a page and calling it a poem, which I think a lot of young people do. You know, maybe they don't understand why they're using certain devices or whatever. That doesn't mean it can't be poetry. It just means for me, my standard for my own poetry is that there has to be some kind of intention behind it. [00:04:18] Speaker A: Well, I'm glad you brought up standards because you call yourself a formal and constraint based poet. [00:04:25] Speaker B: Yes. [00:04:26] Speaker A: What does that mean for the uninitiated who don't know? And then we can even start before you describe maybe your own approach. What is form or constraints? What do those mean in relation to poetry? [00:04:40] Speaker B: Yeah, so forms are that which structures a poem. And so formal poetry would refer to those structures that have been established and kind of recapitulated a bunch of times. So for example, I think a lot of people know what a song sonnet is. Shakespeare popularized the form. It's got a certain number of lines, it has a certain rhyme scheme, it has a certain cadence for the meter. So all of these things kind of work together to create a certain form of poem that conveys one particular idea that normally has like a turn at the end. There's like a volta is what they call it at the end. The last two lines are supposed to kind of turn something, change something up from the rest of the poem. So this structure would be a form and there are tons of them, you know, and I mentioned haiku earlier. That's more of a syllable based poetic form. But there are all different kinds of different things that would create shape to a poem. That wouldn't just be what we call free verse, which is just lines with no real poetic devices used to kind of give them shape. So no, no rhyme, no meter. No. I mean, probably line break, but maybe not. There's a lot of non line break poems now and they call them, there's a name for them, but I can't recall. I think it's like paragraph poems or something. [00:06:12] Speaker A: You know what, I'm useless after the 19th century. I think it even probably nice after the 16th. So certainly I think modern and postmodern poetry is not, it's not always my forte, although I have to read some every now and then. But continue, please. [00:06:29] Speaker B: It's, it's difficult. There are definitely different shapes of poems now in like modern postmodern realm of things, which is why I sort of incorporated different styles in my book. That includes like not only kind of older styles like sonnets and gozels and sestinas and all of those that anybody who's kind of studied poetry might be somewhat familiar with, but the newer things like, like anagram or any, any of those kind of constraints are kind of, they develop later, I guess. [00:07:08] Speaker A: Okay. [00:07:08] Speaker B: And so hopefully that answers the question. [00:07:10] Speaker A: I think, I think it does. I think if, you know, if someone's familiar with, you know, Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? There is a, there's a rhythm, what we call meter to the way that you're writing. And so the difference between a novel, which is written in prose, which has no constraints to use your word on how it should sound, whether it's line by line or the rhyme or anything that's prose, and then poetry or verse, is when there are again constraints to the, the sound, the cadence, even the shape as you're describing. So yeah, with all that, why then clarify that you are a formal and constraint based poet? Isn't that just poetry? Lisa Cooper? [00:08:00] Speaker B: I wish, but unfortunately no. I think recently there have been a lot of poets who have gotten a lot of notoriety who don't do any of those things. And so stepping into the poetry world at this particular moment in time is interesting because we have all of the social media platforms, Instagram especially, being the vehicles for a lot of people to gain popularity with their poems. And it just, there are lots of like small kind of quippy sayings that people have and they're calling it poetry, but it has no rhyme, no meter, no form, no structure, no, you know, even like they don't illustrate anything. They don't give you any kind of image even. It can be like, I should just pull up some, some poems, but to read you some baddies. [00:08:59] Speaker A: Ruby cower. [00:08:59] Speaker B: Ruby cower. Yeah, everyone knows that's who I'm talking about. And I don't want to poo poo on her. She has made a lot of money writing poetry, more than any poet probably has ever made. [00:09:11] Speaker A: You can criticize her. She's got enough money, she can handle it. [00:09:14] Speaker B: I'm very happy for her that she has been so successful. But. And I do think that she's opened the door for a lot of people to learn to like poetry who otherwise wouldn't, which is cool, but hopefully they would grow up beyond that. [00:09:28] Speaker A: Yeah. You sound unconvinced as you're explaining it. [00:09:31] Speaker B: Probably. Probably a little. [00:09:33] Speaker A: You remind me of my English teacher in high school who said, you know, the Twilight books, they are what they are, but they're getting kids to read. And I'm like, listen. Which I read them too, so I can't, I can't talk smack too much, but I know it's the same thing. It's, you know, is it. Is it getting the kids into poetry? We'll. We'll see, I guess. [00:09:53] Speaker B: But I have, I have heard a lot of people say, I started with Rupi Kaur and then I was excited about poems and so I started reading other ones and that's how I found etc. Like Shakespeare or something. Well, then I think Google is an asset in this way. People will just look up nice, good poems I like, I would like. And then they get things that like Shakespeare or something. [00:10:19] Speaker A: Well, then I'll allow it, I guess. But nice only with much skepticism. So if, then if Rupi. If Rupi Kaur or if other poets who don't really adhere to a particular form, although she certainly has her own aesthetic that's very recognizable, as you're saying, very Instagrammable even. [00:10:40] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. [00:10:41] Speaker A: Is this just the direction that poetry is moving in? Are you trying to bring it backwards or are you. Are you just imitating something old? What are you. Why aren't you going with the flow? Aren't you free in your verse? [00:10:56] Speaker B: It is, I think the essence of poetry is how can you convey something beyond what the poem actually says in such a constrained fashion? Like, that's why I like it, because there are these kind of conventions that add meaning to a poem when you're so free with your verse and I don't know, willy nilly with how you put words on the page, I don't think that it conveys with the same power the message that you're trying to convey. And so I'm not trying to like, just do what's old. The goal with this Project in particular was to try to take the spirit of the thing. What is a sonnet trying to do? And then bring it into modern ideas. So, like, what am I dealing with in my life? Or what is something I want to write about now? And how can I use the shape of a sonnet to help portray that meaning? So I think it's. I use it more. I use these kind of constraints or these forms more in the sense of aiding meaning. That kind of idea of the form and function of the thing, which I'm sure you hear all the time in literature studies. But how do form and function inform each other? How do they work together to create meaning in a world where meaning is so subjective? I think having those benchmarks is really helpful for conveying meaning. So I don't want it to just be what makes people feel stuff. I want to actually, like, portray something beautiful in a beautiful way that makes sense to me. [00:12:40] Speaker A: I had a professor who once explained why poetry has. Especially older poetry, why it has certain rules to it. He gave the analogy, and I'm sure this analogy's been tossed around a million times, but I think it was something like, you know, you can't play tennis if there are no lines in the court. You know, you can't have an enjoyable game, or you can't win, basically, or achieve the thing you want to if there aren't any rules about what you're doing. That said, is there any particular virtue to free verse? I believe you do have at least one poem in here, Autumn. I don't know if it's the only one I can't remember, that you do have in free verse. So you do find the utility in it. [00:13:20] Speaker B: Yes. [00:13:21] Speaker A: Unless it's ironic, which didn't strike me as such. [00:13:24] Speaker B: No. There's a reason, actually, why I chose to use free verse for that one. [00:13:30] Speaker A: Please, Please. [00:13:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Autumn. It has this. I was trying to evoke, like, a feeling of falling leaves, maybe. So something a little unstructured or a little more whimsical felt appropriate. Especially because I'm using this image of a woman kind of like breezing through the door. I felt like that form fit the bill for what I was trying to do. [00:13:57] Speaker A: I see. And continuing to talk of forms, tell me about this decision to include in the afterword. Here you have every poem, and you list the form you. It's. It's mainly just that I don't think you always say, like, here's my rationale for, you know, why I did this. And I suppose it would be up to the Reader. Was this your idea to include this afterward, or was the editor's. How did that happen? [00:14:24] Speaker B: No, it was my idea to do it. My goal with this volume was because I was sort of trying out all of these different poetic forms, and it was really. This whole project was sort of a harebrained idea of, you know, one day I just was like, I'm gonna write a poem in every style, and it'll be fun. And it's obviously, like, quite difficult. So it took a long time for me to tackle the ones that I felt were necessary for a volume like this. I wanted to make sure I got, like, one of each major type that I wanted. But the idea is, I think so many people have sort of lost that. That appreciation that I've. I feel when I read a poem. And I go, oh, that's a. Whatever. Wow. That was masterful. And I. Do you know Sherman Alexie? He's a. [00:15:21] Speaker A: Yes. [00:15:21] Speaker B: Native American writer. [00:15:22] Speaker A: Indigenous. Yeah. Yeah. [00:15:24] Speaker B: He. He has this incredible, incredible memoir called you don't have to say that you love me, and it's about his mom. And in the memoir, there are all of these poems kind of wrapped in. In throughout the narrative, and you have these just stunning poems, like, kind of woven throughout. It's beautifully done. That book made me cry, probably more than any other book. It was great. Highly recommend if you want to cry. But the. As I was reading, you know, that feeling of going, oh, that's like a whole series of haiku or, oh, that's a villanelle. And he's kind of shaped it differently or whatever for the purposes of getting at a certain meaning in his book. And I remember feeling like it would be so cool if everybody who read this book would know that that's what he was doing. And it wasn't just that. It was also reading other poetry books and kind of having that aha. Moment that I really enjoy. I love kind of seeing behind the scenes and getting. Getting an idea of why they would have made the decisions that they made when poets are forming things a certain way. And my goal with this book, because I figured a lot of people who vaguely know me on the Internet might get this book and read it, who maybe have no access or understanding of poetry at all. I thought having a little key in the back might be that, like, little hurdle. Get them over the little hurdle so that they'll be like, oh, I kind of sort of maybe get it. Or I really liked this one poem, and I didn't like anything else, but they could at least look up More of those and kind of start that path toward loving poetry, I hope. [00:17:05] Speaker A: I think it's helpful and I agree. I think that an obstacle, whether real or imaginary to reading poetry or getting into even older poetry, whatever, older means anything with a form, maybe I think an obstacle can be that there's maybe also pressure to get it or not. Like there is not just to get the form, but also like, what's the meaning? What did the poet intend? And there's maybe even more than with a novel. I think poetry can feel high stakes. Like there's something a little more obscure about the meaning and like, oh, I need to figure it out and it's too hard. Like, let me go read whatever else. So I think the. The afterword was. Was welcome. I don't, admittedly, I don't pick up a ton of modern books of poetry, so I don't know if everybody's doing this, but I think it's a good idea, innovative in that way. [00:18:04] Speaker B: I, Yeah, I just really wanted to do it and then actually within the last few years I've, I've sort of. I found other poets that have also done it. So it's not totally an innovation of my own, but it is something that I thought of a while ago and decided I wanted to do with this book before I had seen other people do it. So other people do do it though. But not. It's not pretty regular, I guess. I think more in the realm of the formal and constraint based poets tend to do it. [00:18:36] Speaker A: Makes sense. Makes sense. Are you reading and would you recommend any other contemporary poets? Because you, you did have a little bit of skepticism about some modern and postmodern poets earlier. Are there any that you would recommend? Not that we're not recommending you, because we're recommending that everyone go out and buy the book. But in addition, once they're done reading this and buying five copies each, who else should we read? [00:19:04] Speaker B: My very favorite is Anthony Atherin and he actually wrote an endorsement on the back of this book, which was the coolest and most exciting thing. So Anthony Etherin is a formal and constraint based poet, but he is just absolutely masterful. Like, I, I don't think there's anybody who even touches the kind of stuff that he can do. He writes palindromes, whole sonnets that you can read forward and backward by letter or by double letters or by series of letters. He does all kinds of really interesting things. So I highly recommend his books, Slate Petals, also a Palindrome and Knit Ink. Those are his Two big, bigger volumes. Fabulous. A lot of the really great poets that I found in that kind of world are published by Penarakt Press, which unfortunately I think has gone under recently. But they. Yeah, there are lots of other really great poets. There's one that I reference in my afterword, Greg Hill also. He's fabulous. There are, yeah, lots of different people. If you look up Penarack Press, you'll be able to find a lot of them that I really like. [00:20:27] Speaker A: Okay, so modern poetry is not totally dead then. [00:20:32] Speaker B: It's not. It's not. There is this resurgence of people who are really doing this kind of, I don't know, revivalistic, almost formal. Excited about formal poetry, but are not also stuck in. It has to be exactly the same. You see a lot of that. I don't know, maybe that would be more retrievalistic. The people that are like, I'm going to write a bunch of formal poems, but I want it to sound like old poems. And that's it. There's that a lot. I think you see that more in Anglican and Catholic spaces. Especially like Social Suspects. Yes, yes. So I love them too. But I like that innovative twist that a lot of the more constraint based folks are doing as well. So other modern people that are fabulous. Malcolm Guy, I don't know if you. You are familiar with him. He is a modern sonnet writer. He does a lot with Keith and Kristen Getty. So like I saw him perform a poem at the Keith and Kristen or the Getty Conference. That's what it's called a couple years back. He does lots of cool things. He has a YouTube channel as well you can check out. And then there are people like, Dana Joya is amazing, but he is actually more of a free verse type. But he uses meter, so he's still. He's got his toes in both worlds almost. James Matthew Wilson, he is a huge proponent of poetry, needs to have constraints. He's written books about that. Benjamin Meyer. Yeah. These are all like kind of contemporary folks who are doing this same realm of things. [00:22:25] Speaker A: Okay, now I'm curious and maybe you don't have the answer, but I would love for you to speculate. What do you think is driving this resurgence, I think you said, or this maybe mini renaissance of formal and constraint based poetry. I mean, you could speak to your own interests, but you also had to get published, so got published for a reason. It's getting published elsewhere for a reason. Why do you think that might be? [00:22:52] Speaker B: I think it's a natural pushback to the postmodern kind of overtaking of all things in academia. So if you go to any kind of MFA program, you're going to get postmodern readings of poems. And a lot of the more formal poems are kind of discounted, and it's colonialist or it's. It's just old white men, so who cares? Those sorts of things. But you get poetic forms in all kinds of different cultures from all over the world and all spanning all throughout time. So I don't think that that's fair, but I do think that it's a natural pushback against that. Poetry is meant to be an authentic presentation of who you are. That's sort of what we're hearing from these postmodern people. Poetry is this act of self expression. It is a place where you highlight and process your own internal emotions and internal trepidations of whatever. But there's this pushback saying, no, poems can just be beautiful. They don't have to be this like, self authenticating thing. It's cool if it does that, I guess, but it doesn't have to be. You know, if you look at all of the poems that have won awards, like in the last few years, years in, like, the major publications, they're all, you know, politically motivated, all kinds of like race forward, sex forward things. They're not necessarily grappling with the human condition or things that are kind of more substantive that I think you get in a lot of the older formed poems. [00:24:46] Speaker A: Well, some might argue that to grapple with issues of race and sex would be dealing with the human condition. So how would you respond to that? [00:24:55] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, to some degree. But a lot of them are doing only that or celebrating the dysfunction, if that makes sense. There's a whole movement that got really popular maybe 10 years ago called Flarf. It's like a whole poetic movement. [00:25:13] Speaker A: Stop, you're making this up. [00:25:15] Speaker B: I am not. I am not making up flarf. [00:25:19] Speaker A: You got me googling it like a fool. I'm gonna find it doesn't exist. [00:25:23] Speaker B: Um, and it is a celebration of all things disgusting, essentially. And so these poems are. Are focused on everything that is the most atrocious. I have a whole anthology on my bookshelf over here of Florf. [00:25:43] Speaker A: So you've got a celebration of Florf, have you? Yeah, the thing that you just said was disgusting that you're going to read. [00:25:49] Speaker B: I got through some of it. I went, this is disgusting. I'm not reading any more of this. [00:25:56] Speaker A: But what is, what does FLARF mean? What is the. What is the etymology of Flarf. What do we. Is it just. It's like a nonsense word for nonsense poetry. Like, what is that? [00:26:04] Speaker B: I actually don't know. I feel like we should be looking this up. [00:26:08] Speaker A: Well, you're the flarf expert here, not me. [00:26:10] Speaker B: I'm not. I'm not. I know that this is a movement that has happened. It's an experimental poetry movement that began in the early 2000s. Okay. So I was a little off. It wasn't 10 years. It was more like 20 years. Cliches, swear word, world words, grammatical errors. It began. Yeah, yeah. So instability, uncertainty. Those are, like, the key issues that they want to celebrate. Anyway, it was a whole thing. This is part of this kind of movement in postmodern poetry that just celebrates gross grotesque. It insists that you gaze upon it and are disgusted. So for the poems that have won awards that do that, I would say that's not really grappling with the human condition. That's making the human condition a spectacle. [00:27:08] Speaker A: Hmm. [00:27:11] Speaker B: But if it is actually grappling with the human condition, that's cool. I like that. [00:27:16] Speaker A: Do you think that if one does not hold to their being an objective standard of truth or beauty, that that person can write good poetry? [00:27:30] Speaker B: I'm sure they could, theoretically. [00:27:34] Speaker A: But if poetry is supposed to deal with something true and beautiful and that person doesn't have a sense of truth or beauty, will it be good poetry? Do you think it. [00:27:47] Speaker B: I guess it depends on if they get lucky. I do think. I don't know. It's sort of like sometimes people just hit it big with a song that hits the right nerve or says the right turn a phrase, and it just. It works, even if they don't believe it. I don't know. I think poetry is kind of the same way. I think you can kind of get away with things popular. [00:28:09] Speaker A: Like, yes, things can be popular, certainly, but can they be good? That's. I think that's what I'm getting at. According to your philosophy of poetry. [00:28:18] Speaker B: Yeah. I am certainly much more of a fan of the poems that are written by people who do have a sense of the transcendent and truth, goodness, and beauty that is rooted in God. But I recognize that that's not the case for a lot of people. And I do read really broadly when it comes to poetry, and I have liked stuff that is outside of that kind of realm of things. I think you just. Natural law, like, because God has created us with. In an ordered existence, living in a world that is ordered in a beautiful and significant way. I think people resonate with that, even if they don't know what to call it or even if they would reject that it exists. So I think that there's a possibility of that. I think it might be harder to do. [00:29:15] Speaker A: Being generous, I think. No, I agree. I think. I think this makes sense. And on the note of poetry having a sense of the transcendent, your publisher, and forgive me if I mispronounced whiff and whiff. Whip and stock. How is that pronounced? Okay. Yeah, it's a. It's a Christian publisher, as far as I can tell. And your back blurb says that you stay, quote, rooted in the Christian tradition of truth, goodness, and beauty. I'm interested to know whether you would categorize your work as Christian poetry. And if so, interesting question. What does that mean and why? [00:29:59] Speaker B: Great question. I did not say that this was a book of Christian poems because I do think that there's a difference in writing poems that are rooted in that tradition and writing Christian poems. So to me, if I were to call my. My poems Christian, I think that would communicate to a lot of people that they need to have some kind of significant theological theme throughout the whole thing or be making some commentary on a Bible passage or something. And not all of them do that. I think a significant amount do. I do have quite a few more, like, theologically oriented poems. And certainly I think my. I did sort of a series of anagrams that were psalms that were rearranged to be kind of devotional. Yeah. I think the difference would be that they're not didactic. They're not meant to be teaching tools in the Christian church. Maybe someday I'll publish a book of poems like that. But this is not that. This is. If you open it up, you might read some kind of depressing, random things that are not. But they're rooted in that tradition of understanding the transcendent goodness of God and the beauty of his creation and the idea that we can create something beautiful with our words, like God did, as he, like, created all things with his words. There's something beautiful about that. And I think, hopefully that's reflected in the way that I've written some of these poems. And, yeah, they're not all just Bible verses or something. [00:31:53] Speaker A: Sure. Is there anything uniquely Lutheran about your poetry or about your practice, if not the poems themselves? [00:32:04] Speaker B: Interesting. Probably the existential angst is very Lutheran. [00:32:10] Speaker A: That's the Midwest emo. It's not the. That's not the Lutheranism. [00:32:14] Speaker B: I think that, too. I think they go hand in hand, man. I think that's like, that's where it all comes from. I think that's why most Lutheran converts, because I'm a convert. You grew up Lutheran, so you don't have the advantage of having suffered outside of Lutheranism to get into Lutheranism. [00:32:30] Speaker A: Thank God. God knew I was weak and I wouldn't be able to last outside of. Outside of the home church. So I. I was, you know, made Lutheran a month into my life. But, you know, you. Oh, I think I just read actually on Twitter you had posted as a teenager. You. [00:32:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:51] Speaker A: You grew up in a Christian household, though. Most nominally. [00:32:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Nominally Christian. Yeah. [00:32:58] Speaker A: Okay. And it was in that environment that you were also beginning to write poetry. Did those two have any connection in your youth? [00:33:09] Speaker B: Ooh, good question. Probably not. I do think that as I dove into Christianity, that is also at the same time that I kind of dove into writing poems, too. More frequently, at least. And I don't know if it's just that when you're in your teens and you're just, like, trying to figure out who you are, processing in that way makes a lot of sense. Unclear. [00:33:37] Speaker A: I mean, it could be, I think, although it seems like the kids are all on the tik tok and whatnot. I'm not sure. Hopefully they're still writing poetry, but I sure hope so for you. I think it seems like it was a very natural thing for you, such that you were saying, you know, well, doesn't everybody do this and. [00:33:54] Speaker B: Right. [00:33:55] Speaker A: I think certainly there are a number of young people who do, but I don't think everyone does. It seems like it was a pretty. I don't know if we would say it's an innate quality, but something that came very naturally to you in your youth. [00:34:07] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm also. I also play guitar and write music. So, like, that also was a factor in that, you know, writing lyrics and writing songs and stuff, all kinds of. At the same time, you know. [00:34:18] Speaker A: Sure. But you said, as you. I don't know. Would you call it a conversion to go from one Christian denomination to Lutheranism? It does. I'm sure it can feel like a big leap. [00:34:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, the problem. I. I did say on Twitter that I converted when I was 7, 16 or 17, and I do think that's true. So I grew up the Episcopal Church, and I was taught that Jesus's resurrection probably didn't happen. Jesus maybe wasn't even a real person. Maybe, like, maybe he was, but if he was, it was just. He was like a good teacher. And we, you know, not everything he said was True. You know, I grew up in such a. An Episcopal church that was so far afield of traditional Christianity that by the time I heard the gospel when I was like 16, 17, I had literally never heard it. Like, nobody ever taught me how Jesus's life, death and resurrection had anything to do with me. And so I happened to be studying the Nicene Creed in Confirmation, and that's how I heard the gospel for the first time. So pretty cool. But I do think that there is something. There's something very powerful about the creeds in that way that they summarize the faith in such a beautiful and succinct way that it can reach people who say the creed every week, even though they don't know what it means. So, yeah, I do think at that point I would have considered myself an atheist. Well, maybe not an atheist. I was more agnostic. I knew God existed. I knew he hated me because I knew that I stunk. So I was like, there's no hope. Life is meaningless. Existential threat. [00:36:17] Speaker A: Was that a kind of self diagnosis that you were so terrible? Okay, this was not something that you were hearing because based on the church you're describing, it doesn't sound like you were getting lots of heavy law. [00:36:29] Speaker B: No, not at all. Yeah, no, this was a. I'm looking around at the world around me and I see so much brokenness and I see so much despair and nothing is the way that it should be. And I see that reflected in myself too. It's actually Dostoyevsky who really communicated to me the weight of the law. I wrote about this in a. In an article for Mockingbird a long time ago. But basically I was reading Dostoevsky at the same time that I was in this confirmation class, Crime and Punishment. And in Crime and Punishment, the. I assume you've read it been a while, but yes. Yeah, but you know, the guy, the main guy kills someone and he's like running away. This is the. The moment I realized that I was terrible. Like, deeply terrible was when I was rooting for him to get away. And I had this realization, like, what is wrong with me? And later that week, I heard the gospel. So God worked that all out, which is really cool. [00:37:38] Speaker A: That reminds me of the kind of impression that one gets of reading Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost. That and I. I think people characterize him as being like, oh, well, Milton wanted him to be, you know, so persuasive and compelling. And it's like, yes, but not in. Not in a triumphant way. I think you have this incredibly charismatic Figure. And that's one interpretation. I'm actually rereading C.S. lewis's space trilogy, and there's a very different depiction of Satan there that's also interesting. But, yeah, when you find yourself getting wrapped up and enamored with evil, it's a subtle but I think very effective way of pointing back to your own sin of, like, why am I sympathizing or empathizing with this figure who is so blatantly obviously bad, and yet I still want him to succeed? You know, what does that say about me? You know, I think, you know, these are examples of prose. Well, no, Paradise Lost is poetry, but different ways that literature can be Christian, as you're saying, without necessarily being explicitly didactic or always having to mention Christ's name every three lines or something. But you were saying that. So you convert to Lutheranism, you get more into poetry. Were you writing lots of, let's say, Lutheran or Christian poetry then? Did you connect that these two things were kind of converging? What was that like? [00:39:10] Speaker B: No, not at all. Now that you're pointing it out. I guess I. I just think that that was such a formative time in my life in general. You know, I was. Let's see. Yeah, because I. I became a Christian, I would say, when I was like, 16, 17, when I heard the Gospel. But I still. I didn't become a Lutheran for another year and a half or so. And in that time, I read the Bible through and sort of came to Lutheran convictions through reading the Scriptures. So the joke is that I became a Lutheran from reading the Bible. And it's true, it's not really a joke, but it sounds kind of ridiculous, but at that point, I feel like my 18th year was really this moment of, like, I've sort of figured out who I am, and that's, like, just how I'm going to be. That's when I met Jordan. That's when I became a Lutheran. That's when I started writing poetry all the time. It was sort of this confluence of. I just kind of like what I like, you know, And I don't. I don't need to change that much from there. So everybody who knew me in college, like, I still like all the same things. So I don't know. [00:40:19] Speaker A: Did you find that writing poetry, actually, before I ask this, were you showing this poetry to anybody or was it all just for you? [00:40:28] Speaker B: Oh, I. I mean, I've published poems since then, so, like, in the literary magazine at college. So I did some of that. I did a lot of, like, Obviously studying poetry in school, you show stuff to people or you turn assignments in. I played music mostly, so I like, did a lot of shows around campus, the local coffee shop, whatever. So people heard a lot of my music. That was sort of the, the way that I shared stuff more broadly, I would say. But yeah, yeah, so I was sharing it pretty broadly actually at that point. [00:41:09] Speaker A: Okay, but. And this was all the poetry you were writing was always shared. I think what I'm getting at is what can be the, the purpose or the helpfulness or the utility of writing poetry? Is it always something that's shared? Does it help you work through something? Does it need an audience? Because you were talking earlier about this should communicate something instead of, you know, let's say it's not shocking, it's not just for gross insistence upon itself. To borrow the Family Guy, exactly. But it, you know, it should communicate something. Can that just be for you? Are there poems that are just for you or should there be an audience to something that you're writing? [00:41:54] Speaker B: There's a really interesting article by Stephen Dunn and he, he's a very well, well known poet who. He has some of the best volumes of poetry that I've read and he writes in free verse. So fun, fun fact. But Stephen Dunn has this article about how much are. I forget the title of it, but it. He basically talks about how much are we supposed to reveal of ourselves in our poems and is it appropriate to bring something so private and make it public? And at what point is that appropriate? So for example, if you have something tragic and horrible that happened to you, bringing that into the public view through poetry, is that appropriate? It's a really interesting little article, but he sort of comes around to like, no, it's like not always appropriate to do that. And I think a lot of modern poetry does do that on purpose because it's this like celebration of victimhood that kind of drives some of that. Or the celebration of the grotesque that's also part of it. I do think some poems that I've written will never have an audience because they're too private. Like, I tend to not be a very public person. I tend to be more private with a lot of things. I feel like a lot of my poems are a little bit, I don't know, arm's length away maybe. I think that is part of the, part of the thing of using forms is that it takes that personal step back. So you're not just. This is my confessional. I think people use poetry for that and I think that that's good if they feel like it helps them process things. But I don't know that it's necessarily always for public consumption. So, yes, there. There are plenty of poems that no one will ever read except for me, probably, maybe whoever goes through my effects when I pass away. But, you know, like, there's. I struggled with this a lot, actually, when I was putting together this volume, because I do have. I do have some poems about my mom dying, like, in this volume. And so to deal with her death in a way that honors her but doesn't, like, detract from kind of the weird and complicated emotions that come with it is hard, especially because she died of an overdose. And so I feel like struggling through what's appropriate to put in there. What's not appropriate to put in there was a little bit of a challenge. So. [00:44:33] Speaker A: Sure. [00:44:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:44:35] Speaker A: And. And, you know, if the question is. Is too personal, by all means we can skip it. What. How do you determine that line? So I guess in a more vague sense, rather than dealing with this specific issue, how does one determine what is good to put in? And this also, I think, touches on my question earlier of if you. You don't have a sense of truth or goodness or beauty, can you write good poetry? Or is that complicating it? So how do you know what's too much? If this is also something that you're doing as an exercise to communicate some maybe deep feelings of the human experience? What's too much of the human experience for poetry? And how do you know? [00:45:13] Speaker B: I don't know how you know. I think it's just. You just do the best you can. [00:45:18] Speaker A: Just do it. I don't know. [00:45:19] Speaker B: I don't know. For me, I think a lot of it was like, what. What is not going to be dishonoring? Was sort of the line here. Because I think a lot of times when you have complicated emotions about things, they can be pretty brutal. And they're also, to some degree, maybe not true. I don't know if this makes any sense, but you can kind of hype things up in your head in a way that is not aligned with reality. And I think poetry kind of lends itself to that, that you can. You can ruminate on things that maybe are bad. So I think that there's. There's a line where if it could be hurtful to someone or cause harm, it's not worth publishing. And that maybe is part of my reaction against this whole victimhood complex that a lot of people kind of thrive in at this particular moment in society that I don't think it's right to just, you know, prance around all of your trauma on display. I don't think that's necessarily useful to anybody. And if anything, it kind of detracts from the fact that you've endured a lot. [00:46:36] Speaker A: It doesn't necessarily anti mental health of you. [00:46:40] Speaker B: No, mental health is great. I love it when people have good mental health. [00:46:43] Speaker A: Stated that she's anti therapy and anti mental mental health. [00:46:48] Speaker B: Absolutely not. That stuff is great. If it works for you, that's great. I just think that there's at some point you have to make a choice if you're gonna live through something or if you're gonna dwell in it. And so that was kind of the rubric I used, was like, what was a stepping stone forward and what not? What is this kind of self indulgent wallowing in pity, you know? [00:47:13] Speaker A: Mm. You're reminding me of an essay that I've assigned in my writing class. This is not a creative writing class. This is like college writing. Whatever. But we at. In Columbia curriculum, there's a. An op ed essay assigned, the justification being, oh, like you're taking what you learn in school, not just how to write, but also everything else, and you're sharing it with the public so that the public can benefit. It always seems like the same three people are writing op eds and same three people who've been writing them for like three decades. But there was one, it was published, oh, my gosh, 2021. If you hadn't read it, I recommend reading. It's called When I applied to college, I didn't want to sell my pain. And this is a student, I think it was a senior at the time when he wrote this, describing, like, I don't want to talk about how he said, like, I'm from the hood and from the projects. I don't want to talk about stuff that happened in my family. I don't want. This isn't my introduction to the school that I want to go to. And he cites a friend, I think, that had written some kind of version of that essay and didn't really know if she got accepted based on her accomplishments or what had happened to her. And this is. And so I'm wondering if poetry, postmodern poetry is not the only genre that's getting affected by this exhibition of the self, this like, gutting and putting it onto the page. I am, I'm curious about why it's such a trend, but it seems to transcend just poetry. It's getting in so Many different kinds of writing. Lots of different op Eds too. But I think the college essay, there's this idea that if you can, I think, present yourself as being so put upon in life, then you should have somebody give something to you. I don't know, it's a little bit transactional, but what you're selling is your deepest darkest secrets and the most personal pains that you've probably experienced. This isn't really a question so much as. Well, maybe it is. I'm wondering why might we say that so many different genres of literature, have they become narcissistic? Is it. Is it narcissism? Is it an age in which truth is so subjective that the only thing you know is the stuff that you've been through? [00:49:39] Speaker B: I don't know what your take is. I do think that's it. I think that's it. [00:49:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:49:43] Speaker B: Solved. Perfect. Nice job. No, I think this is one of the reasons why I had wanted to go into academia as well. I had wanted to go into literary theory. That was my. [00:49:55] Speaker A: Dodged a bullet on that one. [00:49:57] Speaker B: I know, right? Yeah, yeah, that's a whole other story. But yeah. Anyway, I do think there is. There's a prevailing, I don't know, ethos of like the time zeitgeist, whatever you want to say, where everybody who writes on something, it has to be out of their own experience. So. And I don't know why this is so, but I do think that has to do with this kind of subjective idea of truth. I think people feel their victimhood so publicly at this particular moment in time too. I think that is also probably key in that maybe, I don't know, I'm thinking about, for example, like, I have been working on a book pitch about IVF and other assisted reproductive technologies. And as someone who has not used assisted predict assisted reproductive technologies, it's a hard sell for me to say I care about this topic and I want to write this book. Even though I don't have experience with like personally with these things. It's a hard sell. I. With publishers, they're like, but you don't really know enough about it to write about it because you don't personally know. And so I think lots of things are like that. Academia is like that. One of my main frustrations with being a woman who writes in the church is that anytime anyone asks me to speak anywhere for any reason, it's always about women in the church, which is great. Like, it's a good topic, I'm happy about it, but I shouldn't have to Be an expert on that. Just because I'm interested in theology. [00:51:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:51:48] Speaker B: No, yet here I am. [00:51:50] Speaker A: Yeah. You see that reflected, like you're saying, in academia where it's. And I spoke in undergrad with the female professor once and I asked her, I was like, do you often get pigeonholed as being like, you know, feminist reader of whatever? And she was like, yeah. She's like, I don't do. It's not my thing. But that's. There's a kind of pattern now. I don't know what it is. If the only epistemic assurance that you can have is that you know what you know from your experience. And maybe there's a fear of appropriating somebody else's experience. I don't know. [00:52:19] Speaker B: But that's it. That's it. [00:52:20] Speaker A: You do find, you know, anybody who's a scholar of like queer literature, queer studies, they themselves identify as queer. Black studies. Usually a black person. Except there was that joke on. What was it? Snl. There was like a professor from byu and he's like a white guy who. Just black stud. Anyway, old skit, not funny to describe it, but yeah, it's, you know, the same kind of standard. Except I have found that in medieval anything, you don't find anybody who's explicitly. Well, definitely not medieval, but you don't find anybody who's explicitly religious. I have met some people who are Jewish and like maybe practiced a little bit. I'm not super. I don't think I've met any Orthodox Jews in the field, but I'm sure they're are somewhere. I also do, you know, English medieval stuff, so you wouldn't have maybe a ton of Jewish scholars in that field, but it's. That seems to be kind of the exception. You don't find people who are working on very explicitly theological material in literary studies, I should say, who are themselves actually practicing some kind of Christianity. That's. That's the one big weird exception that I found to the rule of people work on the things that they relate to. [00:53:40] Speaker B: That is really interesting. [00:53:42] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, there aren't a ton of. Especially at higher levels of academia like the R1 research institutions, you're not going to find a ton of people who are very vocal Christians, honestly. Like, not in my experience. [00:53:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I do wonder how much of that is just. Christians aren't seen as being credible in academic fields in general. [00:54:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that religiosity, like actual orthodox religious adherence of any stripe, but I think Christianity especially, at least in the States, is seen as Unacademic. But my experience is that the going assumption amongst people, like, hearing this at conferences, is that people just assume that everyone else is secular, like everyone else is either agnostic or atheistic. That's. It's not even. It's not like the God's Not Dead movie where it's like, I'm gonna bully you into not being a Christian. It's just the going assumption is that you are not. I remember I haven't always worn a cross or a crucifix. And to be perfectly honest, I would be, like, insecure about the thought of doing so on campus. But when I started a couple years ago, I started. You would think I was wearing, like, some kind of swastika or like some kind of. Hopefully it doesn't get this video taken off. Just edit that part out if you need to. [00:55:02] Speaker B: Yeah, Remy can edit it out if it's needed. [00:55:03] Speaker A: Yeah. But as some kind of hate symbol or like something very, like, violent or frightening, it's like kind of like looking back and forth at it from my neck to my face. Yeah. It's, I think, a going assumption that there's not a presence there, at least not of. Of Christians. I think other religious groups, depending on the one and depending on the campus, can get a little more sympathy, but not us. And, yeah, you don't have a lot of scholars who I see working on it. So if there is any assumption or idea that medieval studies is like, the bastion of either Roman Catholics or Christians or people who are just conservative of some kind in general, it's not. It's not at all. [00:55:47] Speaker B: I'm surprised, though. I'm not surprised. I do think that especially in literary studies. Literary studies have been so anti Christian for so long. And I'm thinking particularly of, like, as you start with literary theory kind of being the highest, you know, more esoteric approach, those have been so inundated with postmodern critical theory, Marxist critical theory, feminist critical theory, queer theory. All of those things have become the prevailing ways of reading texts. It makes sense that Christians aren't engaging in those spaces as much because you would be expected to engage in those ways, and that might not be what they want to do. [00:56:32] Speaker A: So, yeah, and there was. I mean, there was some trend of like, oh, are we post theory? Are we doing what? I'm like, I don't think we're post theory. It's just getting into, like, further spirals of different, like, micro theories within theories that we don't even recognize as being theory anymore or being a weird way of reading but it is, it is, I would say, a challenge to navigate or explain how to do something like a close reading of a poem. Like, how do you on the one hand recognize that there is objective truth? And you know, I think that author, authorial intention can matter to an extent, although you don't have to know it in order to get an impression of the poem. But on the other hand, it's like, okay, there's objective truth, but you know, there are different people reading the same thing and they're walking away with different stuff. And how do you account for that? So I think returning to your poetry, is there, is there a specific way you would have your readers who everyone, I'm sure, has read this by now, but in case anybody has not, is there a way that you would prescribe reading your poetry or recommend how should one read your poetry or poetry in general? I know you give the assistance of understanding the form, but what is it? What does it look like for you to sit down and read poetry? [00:58:05] Speaker B: Yeah, reading, it's hard because in some sense like a subjective reading or a reader oriented reading has become the standard and that is a postmodern way to read a text. So if you are in a class and you're reading a poem, the chance of your professor saying, what do you think? How does it impact you? Or how does your life resonate with this? That is a very postmodern way of reading a text. And I don't think that it's necessarily all bad. I think it's bad in academic circles. I think it's stupid when we do it there. But sorry, But I do think, you know, authorial intent does matter to some degree. To some degree, you don't have access to that. So yes, that's true. But I do think that that's why form matters so much to me. And I recognize that this is probably because I'm more biased toward like new critical method when it comes to reading close readings of poetry. That understanding rhyme, understanding meter, understanding line break and all of the other things that are going to show up in poems, having an idea of what those things mean and what they function like is going to impact how you understand a poem. All of that to say, I don't think that should be prescribed by any means. I do think it's a tool that you can use to understand maybe something sneaky or fun that I was doing in a poem. You know, I think it's kind of like funny if you, if you see something, you go, oh, that's like clever. That's that's the. The thing I want people to come away with at least once when they read something in this book. But. Yeah, so I wouldn't prescribe something. But at the same time, I do think that there's hopefully something more than just. I identify with this. I think that's great. If you do. If there's something that you identify with and it speaks into your experience or your experience informs something that you're reading as a poem, that's great. But I don't think it should just stay there. I think there should be some. Some engagement beyond that, if that makes sense. Maybe, like, further. Like, maybe take a step further because it's uncomfortable. Yeah. And that's why I put the afterword there, because I want people to take that kind of step, to say, well, what is happening? Like, beyond just my. My experience of the poem. [01:00:36] Speaker A: Sure. So sitting. Giving yourself time to read, to reread, it's. And for anyone who has not read poetry or isn't in the practice of it, it's not. I wouldn't advise reading it like a book where you finish one poem, you move on to the next one. I mean, that's what you do when you're trying to get your assigned reading done for your poetry class that you took in school, but otherwise sitting, reading, rereading, hearing it aloud. So reading it to yourself, which historically has been a practice for poetry, isn't super necessary when you're working with free verse because, you know, there's no sounds that are super critical always to catch. But poetry especially, that is using certain kinds of form. You definitely benefit from hearing as well as reading and seeing with your eyes, obviously. So, yeah, take your time with it. Take notes. Return to the ones that you feel. I don't know. That you're wrestling with. Maybe you didn't. You feel like you didn't get. Whatever that means. Because I think, yeah, there are. There's certainly. There's Lisa's intent for the poem, whether you know what that is or not. But it's not a game of can I read Lisa's mind or the poem? The poet's mind. It's. Yeah. Understanding what's. What's there on the page. And that's really all you have to go with. And the form is part of that. Um, so this ended up being a little mini class on how to read poetry. Yay. [01:02:12] Speaker B: I love it. [01:02:12] Speaker A: Yay. You know, I do this for free. I don't. I should start charging. But. [01:02:17] Speaker B: Yeah, actually, I have a question for you. Oh, yeah. Just to Be interesting, as someone who does medieval studies, do you have like a preference for those kind of Anglo Saxon or like more alliterative poems that like would have kind of shaped a lot of that time period, like the. I don't know, the way that people wrote poems then. [01:02:45] Speaker A: Do you prefer that? So alliteration, for those who don't know, alliteration is when you have sounds, consonant sounds that are successive at the be or just sounds, the beginnings of words that are successive. So oh gosh, I'm so bad at coming up with examples on the spot. And I know you have. [01:03:05] Speaker B: Have some Megan Maldonado meets Lisa Cooper. There's one. Three M's in a row, right? [01:03:12] Speaker A: Exactly. [01:03:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:03:13] Speaker A: Thank you. I'm not the poet here. I merely read poetry and forget it instantly after I read it. Right, so that was an organizing principle. Alliteration was an organizing principle for poetry in Anglo Saxon England. And then there's something called an alliterative revival in the later Middle Ages, which is often the literature that I read. And so yeah, I do, I do enjoy it. I wouldn't. There's something weird about. At least for me. I can't speak for all academics, but like the thing that I study, it's something I enjoy, but in its own way it's not. I don't read it for fun. [01:03:54] Speaker B: I understand. That's why I was wondering because it's such a preference thing and like I. [01:04:00] Speaker A: Enjoy it and appreciate it, but there for me there has to be a difference between what I am doing for my work and what I'm doing for pleasure. And yeah, so I. The poetry that I enjoy, like I've enjoyed Milton even though I've kind of quasi taught it. I don't know that I've ever gone back and read Milton. So I really enjoy the metaphysical poets which are later and beyond my period. Like I would say, like that's my actual personal favorite to read. But I have such a love and fascination and appreciation for medieval poetry. And you know, the romances that I read are often also inverse. So it's a long narrative that reads kind of like a novel, but it is still a form of poetry. So I enjoy it. But yes, so I appreciate when I see especially alliteration. Normally I think people, when they hear poetry, they think rhyme. That's the thing that makes it poetry. Alliteration is vastly underrated. [01:05:07] Speaker B: But I agree there's actually this whole new like alliterative revival that's happening right now. [01:05:12] Speaker A: Another one we're only what now? Like 600 years no, it's. Oh, my goodness. [01:05:19] Speaker B: There was a. On NPR recently, there was a. There's a feature, one of those, like, academic minutes about it, really. Recently there's this big revival, alliterative revival. [01:05:32] Speaker A: I must look into this. [01:05:33] Speaker B: There is. There's a Christian fellow named Paul Dean who runs a website that. [01:05:43] Speaker A: Not to be confused with Paula Dean. [01:05:45] Speaker B: Correct. Let me. Hold on. Wait. He's currently doing an alliterative translation of Sir Gawain in the Green Knight. It's really cool. You would like it. I wonder, is it alliteration? I don't remember what it's called. Hold on. I don't know. Maybe I'll put it in the notes. Yeah. Forgotten, Ground regained. It's on alliteration.net. but you can look up all the different authors, modern authors, who are using alliterative verse. And I'm on there, which is fun. [01:06:24] Speaker A: Oh, ho, ho, ho. Okay. Well, it's a good thing we talk. I will look into that. Okay. Now, I want to ask you a final question. [01:06:38] Speaker B: Yes. [01:06:39] Speaker A: If we, you know, keep talking. Fine. But I don't know what the parameters were for me to talk. So we can go on for another five hours. I don't know. [01:06:48] Speaker B: Sweet. Let's go. The longer we talk, the less likely it is I have to put my kids in bed. [01:06:53] Speaker A: So there you go. [01:06:54] Speaker B: Okay. [01:06:55] Speaker A: Well, keep going. Let's read through the whole book. [01:06:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:07:00] Speaker A: So you. You've had. You have had and you continue to have many vocations in your life. You have mentioned your wife, your mother. You've been a student. You've done, you know, marketing, editing. You've worked in women's ministry. I'm sure there's many other vocations in your life. Which would you say has influenced your poetry the most? [01:07:29] Speaker B: Great question, and I don't know that I have a great answer because I think they all shape. They all shape my poetry because I feel like they all shape me and that, like, my poetry is a reflection of me, even though it's not. I kind of rail against this whole idea of, you know, only self expression in poetry. But I do think that poetry does kind of capture something about a person that you wouldn't get necessarily in other ways. Yeah. I think becoming a. Becoming a writer and sort of getting into the discipline of writing all day every day, probably practically in a practical sense, has shaped my poetry the most because it's given me that discipline to sit down and do stuff. So probably that. But at the same time, I think if you're talking about, like, thematically certainly studying the scriptures has been the most formative thing of anything I've done either as a student, as, you know, just a general church member slash in ministry with young women. Like, I do think being entrenched in. Entrenched in Scripture has shaped me more than anything. So probably that though I know, like, I do have some cute poems about my kids in. In this volume. Like they show up a little bit in there. But at the same time I feel kind of guilty because the. It's always the really beautiful good things in your life that are just kind of maybe taken for granted and you're not necessarily writing poems about. Yeah. So I don't have a ton of like lovey dovey poems about my husband in there, even though I love him very much. Obviously. [01:09:31] Speaker A: I think kind of annoying about him. [01:09:34] Speaker B: I think I'm kind of annoying about him on Twitter, but I do love him a lot. [01:09:39] Speaker A: No, I don't. I. I don't. You've never struck me as annoying. Cool. I must have missed the. The tweets you've written about him or posts. Excuse me? Oh, gosh, you have. You have one about him. I do. I think it's inspired by Nee Cumming. I'm gonna find it just when I need to find something. [01:10:00] Speaker B: Oh, see that. That was more of a like hair brained. [01:10:03] Speaker A: It's a little. It's a little flirty, dare I say erotic. Are you allowed to write erotic poetry and be a Christian woman? [01:10:12] Speaker B: Yes. Yes, indeed. [01:10:14] Speaker A: Okay. [01:10:15] Speaker B: No, but there are those like, like studying and watching time. Those two are probably more on the nose. Yeah. But anyway, I do think that there is some like those things influence my poetry in that they influence me, but like those vocations. But I don't think that they've been like, as concretely, practically, you know, impactful as just like writing all day, every day. [01:10:44] Speaker A: Very practical answer. I stole the question from an old interview that I found of Robert Frost, and he said that being a farmer had influenced his poetry the most. [01:10:54] Speaker B: That makes a lot of sense. [01:10:55] Speaker A: Do with that what you will. [01:10:57] Speaker B: Robert Frost was my mom's favorite, so when she wrote poems, it sounded very much like Robert Frost. Like the same kind of like cadence and rhyme scheme and all of that. I think it's very charming. [01:11:10] Speaker A: Fabulous. [01:11:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:11:12] Speaker A: Anyway, well, I think we could talk a lot more, but I, you know, I think don't want your children to be robbed of you, so that's fine. Oh, that's fine. We only got a couple poems in here anyway, so. Well, thank you, Lisa, for your time and for answering my questions. [01:11:31] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for having me on the program. That is your program. [01:11:35] Speaker A: This is my show that I made and sustain. All right. Thank you and look forward to talking with you sometime in the future. [01:11:44] Speaker B: Awesome, Thanks.