In Three Poems (00:00)
I'm David J. Bauman, and this is a conversation in three poems.

David (00:07)
I'm here with one of my best and dearest friends in the entire world, Joel Showalter

I was telling Micah in our interview rather recently that one of the fun things about this is because I was given advice when it comes to podcasting is to start in that first season, start with people that you know, poets that you already are familiar with, and then you can build from there. And I had some people reach out to me, people that I didn't know, and I just kind of...

Joel (00:28)
Mm.

David (00:37)
took a risk and reached out to some other people that I didn't know. And so it's this great mix. ⁓ And I kind of want to look forward to doing that in future seasons, having people that maybe I've known a long time and people that I'm meeting for the first time and keeping that variety. So like I said to Micah, why don't I ask you, how do you and I know each other?

Joel (00:44)
Yeah.

Yeah, we went to college together for a little while, at, yeah, at least 100 years ago, back at a little college in my hometown called Indiana Wesleyan University. I got my degree from there. You absconded with your family and a degree elsewhere. But we lost touch for a long time. Yeah.

David (01:03)
like a hundred years ago.

Yeah.

fled for the hills. No.

Joel (01:29)
We lost touch for a good long time, but you reached out a while back. I don't know how long ago it's been, yeah, over a poem actually ⁓ of mine that you wanted to use. And I was like, that name sounds familiar. ⁓ it's been a joy to be back in touch with you all these years. So yeah.

David (01:36)
Yeah.

Yeah,

absolutely.

when I reached out to you, I was looking to use a poem that I think you read in your senior presentation and I was wanting to use it as a workshop in a library that I was at. And now here I am, a librarian in another place not too far from where I was at that time. And you ⁓ work as an editor, but not a literary editor.

Joel (01:54)
Hmm.

Hmm.

David (02:10)
except for when it comes to yeah except for when it comes to me well

Joel (02:11)
No, I work as a copy editor. Yeah. I work as a copy editor. Yeah. Well, I

help a little bit from time to time. Come on now.

David (02:22)
You

do. I'd mentioned to someone else that you and Micah were my first editors probably, or are my first editors before anything goes anywhere else. there are four of us that meet every other Sunday to go over some poems and ⁓ happy that one of those is you. You honestly... ⁓

have been such an encouragement to me even in this podcast project. In fact, a lot of the ideas that I had for this, I ran past you because I knew you were another lover of poetry podcasts and a listener. And I wanted to not repeat something else that somebody else was already doing, but to do something, something that stood on its own. And you gave me a lot of great feedback. And so I appreciate that.

Not just again in poetry or this podcast, but seriously in my life period. So thank you for being here in all the different meanings of that phrase.

Joel (03:14)
it's, it's, I'm happy. I'm delighted to be here and it's very kind of you, but we, help each other out. We, we run a lot of stuff by each other and I, I count yout one of my closest friends and you're always the first person I'm sending my stuff to as well. So.

David (03:30)
Well, so this will make this fun to look at a few of your works and the poem that you've chosen. And the way this works for anybody who's new to this, ⁓ we read three poems and talk about them. it's kind of the idea of this whole thing kind of harkened back to a little bit of me missing my radio days, but also missing my YouTube days where I used to take other people's poems and read them out loud. And I always felt like I got a better grasp of it.

Joel (03:34)
Yeah.

David (04:00)
when I wrapped my mouth around it, if I can use that phrase, it in my voice, it adds a different dimension. And so I kind of had mentioned to somebody else that I picture that scene in the, I don't know if you saw the Dylan movie with Timothee Chalamet, but there's a scene where he's with Pete Seeger. He shows up late to the show and Pete Seeger went ahead with another guest already, but.

The idea of Pete's little show on PBS there was he'd say, hey, I really like this song that you play and it goes like this and they would play together and, you know, sing each other's work and talk about other work. And I thought that would really be a fun format to do for poetry. And so that's kind of what this is about. So part of the fun of it is I get to read the first one and we talk about that. You read the second one of your choice and we'll talk about that. And also because art doesn't really live in a vacuum.

Joel (04:36)
Mm.

David (04:54)
were influenced by all the writers that came before us, as well as people that are writing now. And sometimes people that are writing now, we find connections with that we didn't even know were there once we talk about the poems or read them out loud to each other. So without further ado, if you're all right with my jumping right into this, there is a poem of yours are people who most people are not going to be.

Joel (04:55)
Yeah.

.

Yeah.

David (05:20)
I'm looking at the video there, but those who do, just held up a copy of December Magazine that was volume 31.1. And that is where this poem was first published. And it's called

In the Nursing Home by Joel Scholl-Walter. All afternoon and into the evening, we clasp my grandmother's hands, all bones and veins and the Lentigines We place our lips to her forehead, her temple, her cheek, inhaling the musk of her unwashed hair.

avoiding the cannula strung across her aquiline features thinner and sharper than they were last month. Her eyes open, her mouth slack, her breaths quick and shallow, her neck arched like a hatchlings. These are her last days. We all know it. The cavernous minutes not quite filled by our own desultory conversation and the tintinnabula of hymn tunes brought via Wi-Fi.

to the iPhone at her pillow. I need thee every hour, just as I am without one plea, when sorrows like sea billows roll. I sing these words to her, self-conscious at first, but sure, these phrases I have known since I was a child, sometimes sharing her pew on Sunday, her hymnal, my boyish soprano joining her sturdy alto for a verse or two.

it for the final stanza. Like my voice ascends now over the low drone of the oxygen machine, crooning the melodies

that will echo in me as I drive the three hours home, as I close the door to the bathroom and strip and step under the hot spray, exhaling as I begin to wash her from my hands, my lips, my skin, guiltily trying to rinse her weakness from my body. Even as the two fragile sails within her chest still flutter, as the leaky vessel at her center labors on.

I am already putting Spade to sod, some instinct impelling me to leave her behind, to distance myself from the bloom of disease in the air, from the blood stench. My face flushed with the shame of it, silently hailing the wolves and hawks that will find her, and not me, desperate to outrun them all for just a little longer.

Wow, I practiced that Joel and it was still hard to read at the end. So good. ⁓

Joel (08:09)
Well, thank you

for such a generous reading of it. Yeah.

David (08:13)
One of the things that you and I were talking about ahead of time, partly because some of the poems that we chose is the importance of sometimes writing the poem that you're afraid to write.

Joel (08:27)
Mm-hmm.

David (08:28)
there's some honesty in there that I think it's the kind of thing that you think, do I really want to write this because do I want to say this out loud?

But.

I am so thankful that you did.

Joel (08:41)
Yeah, no, thank you.

You know, it's interesting ⁓ being a poet, a writer in middle age. I think that I am more willing to engage with the uncomfortable, the stuff that is

Perhaps stuff that isn't pretty. ⁓ You know, this poem, the speaker is basically me. You know, this is about my own grandmother's death and about... ⁓

the facts of it and about my reaction when I got home from the nursing home. ⁓ But I think poetry, for me at least, a perfect place to explore that stuff. It's a wonderful vessel which to pour less savory things.

the things that aren't as easy to talk about in water cooler conversation. Poetry is a wonderful place to explore and to hold those things. Yeah.

David (09:45)
Yeah.

Yeah, a common theme that's been coming up this season is we talk about how poetry both is and isn't maybe, in what ways it is and isn't therapy. ⁓

Joel (10:02)
Hmm.

David (10:04)
and sometimes chasing after the scariest thoughts that you haven't been able to maybe say out loud or you haven't been able to express. Yeah, that could be a vehicle for dealing with it. Of course, not the final poem. mean, it's poetry isn't just regurgitated grief and,

Forgive me Whitman, it's not merely the barbaric yawp Even Whitman has spent the rest of his life editing that yawp over and over again in ⁓ his one publication that he kept working on. So it is more than that. ⁓ But it can be such a great, I like that idea of it being a vehicle toward being able to say what's unsayable.

Joel (10:25)
there.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. You know, I listened to other poetry podcasts. Maggie Smith on The Slowdown was recently talking about, she gets the question a lot, you know, is poetry therapy? ⁓ And her answer is no, I have a therapist for that, you know. ⁓ And I do too, right? But ⁓ I do think it's a place where we can turn

David (10:54)
Yeah.

Yes. Yeah.

Joel (11:13)
turn those parts of our lives that we may be working in therapy with, and we can turn those over in our hands. And for me, it's a way to make sense of or to make something broken whole or to make something that is not beautiful, beautiful, to some kind of meaning something that may not have a whole lot of meaning in itself. grandmothers die every day.

David (11:29)
Hmm.

Joel (11:41)
And that isn't all that meaningful. But this poem was a way to find some beauty and of course to honor my love for my grandmother, you know.

David (11:51)
Yeah, I love the scene of going back in time to being next to her and singing with your boyish soprano. And then the way you bring it back into the room. And I guess the part where the difficult words come is I think a lot of times, I think in my poems, there may be times where I stopped too soon. And I admire the bravery of you.

Joel (11:56)
Yeah.

Hmm.

David (12:14)
going forward and exploring those things. Because I know there are things that there that I can relate to ⁓ with my own mother's death. I wasn't there for any of my grandparents' passings. But for my mother, I was. And sitting beside, you know, my good friend Dennis, holding his hand just hours really before he left the world. And I've always thought maybe I need to write

about some of those and I finally did in some ways, but when you can read some of your own experience and what, not a total stranger, but someone who is outside of my head has experienced, it becomes more than just what-off was said and ne'er so well expressed.

but wow I didn't know that I felt that way but now that you say it that really resonates with me.

Joel (13:11)
Yeah, that's magic

moment when the poem takes over, That left turn in this particular piece.

really was that one of those moments that feel mystical, where the poem seems like it's leading me, it was leading me in a certain direction.

David (13:31)
Another thing that comes to mind when I read this I love a poem that makes me pick up a dictionary. And I learned, you know, lentigines from this poem. But... ⁓

Joel (13:38)
Ha

David (13:43)
there seemed to be a movement for a while anyway. And maybe I'm saying too much to call it a movement, but there was a mood at least among poets that seemed to be shying away from what they would call sentiment. And

Joel (13:57)
Mm.

David (14:01)
I always thought that you need to have some guts and soul in a poem for it to be art for me. Otherwise, if it were just an intellectual puzzle, a fun way of stringing together some words, then I might just be doing a crossword puzzle or a sudoku, which both are great.

Joel (14:14)
Mm.

David (14:22)
But in a poem, there's also got to be some guts and soul in there. And if you if you try to shy so much away from sentiment that you're you're just on the intellectual. Then you

can miss so much of what a poem can do by walking that balance beam between the mind and the heart. And I just think this poem is so full of both. I just feel overwhelmed by the time I get to the end of it for that reason. Even going back to this evolutionary ancestry ⁓ of kind of how

Joel (14:52)
Mm.

David (14:56)
We left those weaker behind, you know, I think it was Margaret Mead, the anthropologist who you may have seen the quote keeps popping up a lot again lately that when they asked her, when, when is there proof in the record of the human race? When is there proof for civilization? And her answer wasn't the building of some wall or weapons or city, but it was a

femur that had been broken and healed because that meant that somebody stayed with someone rather than if ⁓ I'm paraphrasing her I think but that in the wild an animal with a broken leg is essentially a dead animal because it won't have the time to heal before predators get to it and so

Joel (15:22)
Yeah.

Mm.

David (15:45)
There's all of that in there. And you making it so personal. I hadn't thought about it, but the poem that you chose to read of yours also not in a shower, but is another sort of steamy setting. I'm not giving too much away.

Joel (16:02)
Yeah.

David (16:02)
One of the things that's interesting is while there are metaphors here, really it's in some ways it reminds me of some of Marie Howell's poetry that is actually ⁓ not full of metaphor, but full of detail and full of imagery and

Joel (16:13)
Hmm.

David (16:19)
just masterfully done and I thank you for letting me for letting me read it. Now your poem that you chose also your poem I should say doesn't take place in a shower but it has some connections when it comes to steam and yet does something very different in a very different setting. Is there anything you want to talk to us about that poem before you read it?

Joel (16:42)
No, I don't think so. Yeah, we'll talk about it afterwards. let's do that.

David (16:44)
can just jump right in. Wonderful.

Joel (16:48)
This poem is called Steam.

Tonight, the heat persists, and yet I sit in the steam room at the downtown Y, counting and recounting the graying tiles on the dim walls on the floor, evading and catching the glances of the near naked men, all of us silent, listening for the hiss of the apparatus, the dispensation.

of the blistering mist. My gaze falls on the thin skin at my wrist, the hairs there darkened in the thick sodden air. Delicate whorls, almost black, twisted, damp. And my sight shifts suddenly to pictures from last night, shucking the ears of sweet corn at the sink, the dark

Wild tangle at the husk's peak and the fine fibers between the rows of pearls. Wet threads that cluster on the counter. The simmering water sending its own steam into the kitchen and further into my memory. My mother in another August boiling water for corn. Picked fresh from the garden stock and quickly stripped.

This supper by lamplight and the TV's spark. My father's face, hard as baked earth. Slow fans murmuring at the windows. The room, taut and still as a thief. Expectant, poised, like the dried kernels. Stained pink with poison that we dropped into soil. Row after row in the spring, my father and I.

Our backs and necks slick with sweat, weary, unspeaking. Like these men around me now, who tense their muscles in this shadowed room, testing the invisible filaments that stretch between us in the heat, that promise or threaten to connect or ensnare us. Like spider silk, glinting in the intermittent light.

waiting for rain that offers no relief.

David (19:21)
Hmm. That's lovely. You have you're welcome. Thank you. Gosh, you have this way of going back and then forward in time and then back for further. That is just enviable.

Joel (19:25)
Thank you.

David (19:37)
So you go from the steam in the steam room, and to the sink, and then further back in time, to the sink, and then further back in time to actually picking the corn. Is this kind of how the poem started in the first place in your head? Those thoughts just started coming as you were...

Joel (19:54)
I believe that the genesis of the poem was looking down at the hair on my wrist and thinking, oh, that looks like the silk of corn. And so that visual anchor

I think was what started the poem on its way.

David (20:16)
what's the hair called that comes out of an ear of corn? I don't know. The silk, that's it. Yeah. As you were sitting there with husky men, thinking about husking corn, but then also further back to planting it and the pink.

Joel (20:20)
Yeah, the silk, think? The husk and the silk, yeah, the silk. With the corn silks. ⁓ Yeah. knows? Yeah.

Hmm.

David (20:35)
poison that we dropped into soil.

Joel (20:38)
Yeah, that's a very vivid visual memory of mine as a kid planting the corn that was always had some kind of antifungal or something on the outside that was, you know, vivid magenta paint.

David (20:51)
Yeah,

interesting.

Joel (20:52)
back in Indiana, you know?

David (20:53)
Yeah, most of the kids that I went to school with even if they didn't grow up on farms, they had jobs, they call it detassling corn every year. And I somehow got away with not doing that.

Joel (21:08)
Yeah, we

were busy enough in our own garden, you know, so.

David (21:14)
I wish I could figure out what it is about showers and steam and heat that is, I guess there's the metaphor of cleansing involved.

Joel (21:25)
Yeah,

I wonder if for me, those places feel kind of like, well, it's a popular word these days, they feel like liminal spaces. feel like in between spaces. you're not, you know, if you're in the steam room, you're not fully clothed nor fully naked generally. You know, you're not in the gym working out, but you're also not in the shower getting ready.

David (21:34)
Mm-hmm.

Joel (21:48)
to leave. you know, as a gay man, those spaces are also sexually charged, or at least erotically charged. And, of course, this poem gets at that a little bit. And again, I think for queer folk of a certain age, those in between spaces were really important. They were all that we had.

And the places we gathered tended to be on the fringes or in those in between spaces. And so that resonates for me as well.

David (22:19)
And I could see myself, I think, as at a time before I had come out, having come out in life a lot later, ⁓ and being in a space like that and trying to not look where I would make myself or anyone else uncomfortable and find myself glancing down at the worlds on my wrist instead ⁓ and Yeah, there's a lot that I think is said between lines.

Joel (22:32)
Sure.

Hmm.

I think in both poems, it so happens that ⁓ the setting becomes a little bit unmoored. You've already alluded to that a little bit in this poem, but in the grandmother poem, in the nursing home poem, there is this, again, engaging with memory and ⁓ how that

spills over into the present as well. ⁓ That seems to be ⁓ something maybe that happens in both poems that I think is interesting. And I am drawn to poems as a reader as well, where you suddenly find yourself someplace you didn't expect. And I think that I hope to have achieved that in this one as well.

David (23:25)
Yeah.

Yeah, beautifully really, because I mean, if you talk in very blunt terms, you start off in a steam room with a bunch of men and you end up in the field with your dad. it's, it's, quite a trip, but it makes it very, very natural. And, and I'm thinking that all of the time as we walk around the world that we live in,

Joel (23:38)
Mm-hmm.

David (23:48)
in our heads at least is not, it's not moored completely to our surroundings physically. We carry around all of our memories and all of our past with us. That's part of who we are and part of how we're experiencing this moment Even though I think that's hard to do maybe in other in other forms. I suppose it's done in memoir and in it in prose.

Joel (23:52)
Yeah.

David (24:12)
But poetry, think, is a unique way to be able to do that and really condense it down.

Joel (24:18)
I

I'm, proud of this piece. Actually, it was one of the first ones that, that I wrote when I got back into writing poetry earlier in middle age that I am now. but, ⁓ yeah. ⁓ but, I'm proud of the music, I guess.

David (24:31)
I like that.

Joel (24:39)
was really trying to pack as much ⁓ assonance and consonance and rhyme, internal rhyme end rhyme that I could. And I think it, I hope it contributes a little bit to that, that feeling in the steam room of things being a little bit of a mystical, magical place ⁓ that's a little bit outside of reality.

I think of Kay Ryan, who handles some of that really subtle internal rhyme and internal musical devices so deftly. I admire her work and her skill, her talent in doing that kind of thing.

David (25:20)
So you chose then for our third poem today, you chose something by Liesl Mueller. And it's one that I think you shared with me a long time ago.

and then brought back to my attention when we talked about this. Anything you want to say about this poem before you read it for us?

Joel (25:39)
⁓ it's very different perhaps in some ways than the stuff that we've read so far. it's a pretty well-known poem. some of your listeners may be familiar with it, but, it's almost a dramatic monologue in some ways. but, ⁓ I just find it so lovely. ⁓ and that was, ⁓ the primary reason that I chose it.

And I hope your listeners will hear why.

David (26:01)
All right, let's go do it.

Joel (26:03)
Monet Refuses the Operation by Liesel Mueller.

Doctor, you say there are no halos around the streetlights in Paris, and what I see is an aberration caused by old age and affliction. I tell you it has taken me all my life to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels, to soften and blur and finally banish the edges you regret.

I don't see. To learn that the line I called the horizon does not exist and sky and water so long apart are the same state of being.

54 years before I could see Rouen Cathedral is built of parallel shafts of sun. And now you want to restore my youthful errors, fixed notions of top and bottom, the illusion of three-dimensional space, wisteria separate from the bridge it covers. What can I say to convince you the houses of parliament dissolve night after night?

to become the fluid dream of the Thames. I will not return to a universe of objects that don't know each other, as if islands were not the lost children of one great continent. The world is flux, and light becomes what it touches, becomes water, lilies on water, above and below water.

becomes lilac and mauve and yellow and white and cerulean lamps, small fists passing sunlight so quickly to one another that it would take long streaming hair inside my brush to catch it, to paint the speed of light. Our weighted shapes, these verticals, burn to mix with air and change our bones, skin.

close to gases. Doctor, if only you could see how heaven pulls earth into its arms and how infinitely the heart expands to claim this world. Blue vapor without end.

David (28:43)
Beautiful poem, beautiful. And I can see some of what attracts you to it as well from what speaks out in some of your poems, some of the musical work that's done here

Joel (28:45)
It's so lovely. Yeah.

David (28:56)
change our bones, skin, clothes, and you've got the bone and clothes. And there was somewhere else that I was highlighting further up and lost it because I was just getting caught in so much of this. ⁓ Yeah, yeah.

Joel (29:02)
Mm-hmm.

It's hard not to.

David (29:13)
But the images, the images as well with like the the wisteria. How can you separate the wisteria from the bridge which it covers? And I love that that idea. It's not just a bridge and wisteria covering it. It's some sort of whole.

Joel (29:13)
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Yeah, this, you know, it's a gorgeous piece. Even if you've never seen a Monet, you know, and then if you happen to be familiar with his work, which a lot of folks it becomes almost ekphrastic, you know, but this they're

David (29:40)
Mm-hmm.

Joel (29:56)
There are no edges, there is no horizon that everything leads into everything Isn't that far off in some ways? the universe is made of just a few building blocks, you know. We are all stardust, as I know you're fond of saying, and I am fond of saying as well. And certainly a time of...

David (29:59)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Joel (30:19)
much strife and conflict around the world. Any small reminder that all boundaries are made up, you know, is welcome to me.

David (30:27)
Mm-hmm.

In a way, I guess physically, you did that in your poems in that you're there in a steam room, but you're also there in a kitchen somehow at the same time. then, and you're also then at the same time.

Joel (30:42)
Mm. ⁓

David (30:48)
in a field with your father and those things are all true at one time within you, and all of that is one. I think about that when I think I'm not a religious person anymore, but when I think about people passing, what they leave behind, whether it's, you know, leftover stardust that becomes something else or as Walt Whitman said, you know, becomes the leaves of grass eaten by cows that becomes milk that we drink, whatever.

Joel (30:53)
Yeah.

Yeah.

David (31:15)
adding to what he said, I guess.

Joel (31:15)
Mm.

David (31:17)
But in that way, you know, the people that have passed, still carry them with us. And the experiences that we've had, we still carry with us. But also there's a unity of maybe those men who were strangers in that steam room, all maybe experiencing it differently with their own series of memories and thoughts and maybe trying to not look or maybe not thinking about anyone else in the room at all. And yet there's a unity there.

Joel (31:20)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

David (31:43)
And again, it's that vapor that connects them, you know?

Joel (31:43)
Yeah, and I mean, you know,

my exhalation in the steam room becomes their inhalation, know, ⁓ the sweat from their body. Yeah, the from their body is something that I take in as well. We leak like crazy as human beings, you know, and I find that delightful. So...

David (31:50)
Yeah. Speaking of Whitman.

You

Joel (32:09)
Yeah, it's really astute, it's really lovely observation connecting this to the other two poems. Thank you for that, David.

David (32:18)
I didn't. Like I said, sometimes it's just fun to see these things as you talk about it. In a way, it's like the creation of a draft of a poem. And I do say draft because obviously we tend to edit and revise ⁓ and then sometimes I over-edit. I have to step back. But yeah, that's part of the fun of experiencing the poem.

Joel (32:22)
Hmm.

We all do we all do many of us do

David (32:45)
And yeah, I hadn't thought about it until we got to the end and the vapor with the blue vapor without end. There is that sort of unity even as you're losing your grandmother, you're finding ways to keep her.

Joel (32:48)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

David (33:01)
as well.

Yeah, maybe that's one of the coolest connections that I see here among them is the unity of all things, whether it be through how we perceive them visually on the outside or how we perceive them internally.

Joel (33:14)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I like that. I like that very much.

David (33:18)
beautiful,

beautiful choice of work here. And it's delightful. We read each other's stuff so much. So it was delightful to kind of share that with some we could go on for hours doing this sort of thing and are often known to do. So thank you.

Joel (33:34)
For sure.

haha

David (33:40)
for being somebody who I bounced a lot of the ideas off for this whole podcast project and also having ⁓ the bravery to jump in and let me read some of your and talk about

what poetry means to us and how it connects us. I appreciate that.

So thank you for being here with me today. ⁓ And it definitely has. And I'll see you on the screen again very soon, I'm sure. All right, thanks, Joel.

Joel (34:00)
It's been a delight. Thank you so much for having me.

next Sunday.

Thanks, David.

In Three Poems (34:13)
Our three poems in this episode were two by Joel, the first one in The Nursing Home, and that was published in December Magazine, volume 31 in the spring and summer issue of 2020. The second poem, Steam, also by Joel, was published in Mud Season Review, volume 3, 2017. The third poem was Monet Refuses the Operation by poet Liesel Mueller, and that was from the collection Second Language Poems.

published by Louisiana State University Press in 1986 and used with permission of the publisher. For information about upcoming episodes, you can follow us on Instagram, Facebook, or Blue Sky. And if you like what you hear, please do share it. Encourage your poetry family to tune in on their favorite podcast app or at inthreepoems.com or even on the in3poems YouTube channel. I'm David J. Bauman and this

has been a conversation in three poems.