Marjorie Maddox (00:00)
and enough of windows, praise doors, step out with arms open and eyes gathering vim and vision, grandeur trailing from worm and woodchuck, branch puzzles of woods, open boat of breeze, all brimming with hey and hallelujah and celebrate, such green giving of thanks, such miraculous mercy of earth, calm valley and even this

rugged rocky chain we climb now as family, claiming praise as respite, holding close each breaking day, dangerous yet divine in all its gorgeous glory.

In Three Poems (00:46)
That's the voice of 2023 Monson Arts Fellow and radio host of WPSU-FM's Poetry Moment, Marjorie Maddox. Marjorie has published 17 collections of poetry in her lifetime. She was co-editor with Jerry Wempel of the anthology, Common Wealth, Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, published by Penn State University Press in 2005, as well as its 20th anniversary project, Keystone.

Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, also by Penn State University Press, just this past year in 2025. Welcome to In Three Poems, the podcast where we read three poems with a different guest poet each week. And the third poem is always a work by another poet chosen by our guest.

David J Bauman (01:34)
I have with us today, dear friend Marjorie Maddox, who's had a very busy year. Welcome to the podcast, Marjorie, first of all.

Marjorie Maddox (01:42)
Thanks so much for having me.

David J Bauman (01:43)
So you have four books and an anthology that have all kind of come out in the same year. It's one of those things you don't plan, right?

Marjorie Maddox (01:50)
Yeah, yeah, it's a little bit crazy.

A good thing, but I wouldn't recommend it all happening at once.

David J Bauman (01:58)
Yeah, I can only imagine that. You've had the Keystone Poetry Anthology that you co-edited with Jerry Wemple who was a guest earlier in the season, and you've been having readings not only in Pennsylvania, though. I participated in the one at Lit Youngstown, which was... That's amazing.

Marjorie Maddox (02:13)
Right, right. I think we're up to 20 readings now. So we've been going

like gangbusters around the state.

David J Bauman (02:19)
It was kind of fun to tell people, yeah, I'm going with a group of poets from Pennsylvania to Ohio to read poems about Pennsylvania. also four of your own books. You've got Hover Here. And tell me the other ones. That's it.

Marjorie Maddox (02:25)
Yeah. ⁓

Earthly Space, which is a

collaboration with photographer Karen Elias, ⁓ Seeing Things, and then yes, A Man Called Branch which is prose. ⁓

David J Bauman (02:37)
Yes.

and a man called Branch.

okay,

and that's part of your love for baseball is where that comes from.

Marjorie Maddox (02:47)
Yes,

that's about my great-granduncle Branch Rickey who helped break the color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson. So it's a very chatty, kind of poetic narrative biography. Lots of fun to read.

David J Bauman (02:55)
That's awesome.

That's what

that does sound fun. That does sound fun. I know you've been working on that and looking forward to that for some time. So.

Marjorie Maddox (03:05)
Yes, yes,

that one I wrote like 20 years ago. So that's this whole timing issue. Who knows when things are going to actually come out.

David J Bauman (03:14)
so we chose we put our heads together and chose three poems to focus our talk around and

One of the cool things about this is I get to read the first one. And so the first one that we have is actually from your book I mentioned, Hover Here. And it's a short one, but I wanna kinda talk about a couple of the poems around it as well.

Marjorie Maddox (03:37)
you

David J Bauman (03:37)
It is called How We Are Found. Not slip sliding away that same drop of me, you, us in breeze or creek, cumulus or reef, whiplashing what's left of then into now. And not that mindfulness moment invented by blade and slug on a day not unlike tomorrow's in the middle of nothing, but the same me, you, us on display.

but rather something indescribably and irretrievably in between. And it's, thank you, thanks. It's fun to do, because it's a little enigmatic, and it's fun to look at line endings in the structure. There's a little bit of visualness going on where some of the lines, where they're indented.

Marjorie Maddox (04:16)
Wonderful reading.

David J Bauman (04:31)
and trying to imagine how the author imagines that in forming a reading. In that way, I will compare this to something like the snowman by, Wallace Stevens, the snowman, where in that poem there was no punctuation whatsoever.

Marjorie Maddox (04:41)
Well, it's David's turn.

David J Bauman (04:48)
and you have to figure out just where the right place is to pause and it can kind of make a big difference.

Marjorie Maddox (04:53)
Yeah, this one has

a little bit different style for me. it's really, I kind of wrote the two together, the one that comes right before it, When We Are Lost, How We Are Found. ⁓ And I think if I remember correctly, it's because a journal was asking for submissions on the theme of When We Are Lost, How We Are Found.

David J Bauman (05:02)
Okay. Yes.

that's great.

Marjorie Maddox (05:17)
So sometimes when I get stuck, will look at what journals are asking for. Do they have particular theme? And then I kind of just riff off of that. So these are kind of more riffing and wordplay than some of the other pieces.

also has to do with trying to find your place in the world. And it's not always exactly here or there. It's sometimes in between where you're looking.

David J Bauman (05:34)
Yeah.

Yes.

And that seems to happen a lot in this book and also in sort of a unifying way because there's another poem I think it actually stretches into, that's like right near the end of part two and then you get into part three and there is, yeah, a few poems in, a poem called The Sound of Gulls

And I had a really hard time, me being a bird lover, by the way, choosing one of your recent poems to read, because there's so many options. There were beautiful poem about the loon. There were poems about curlews, which I'll ask you about when we get to talking about a poem from that book, but also these about the gulls and even feathered clouds where you have that sort of imagery and wings.

Marjorie Maddox (06:20)
I'll tell you my inspiration.

I had a wonderful, wonderful writing residency in Monson Arts in Maine. And so I drafted most of this book, why I was there. I set myself a goal of three poems a day, know, drafts, three drafts a day. And, and I wanted to get to like 50. And, you know, a bunch of those I had to throw out. But,

It really made me keep going and I sat out on this balcony that they had and looked out at the water. And so there's a lot of poems with the influence of not Pennsylvania, but of Maine, those particular poems. Yeah.

David J Bauman (06:55)
Right. Is

that where some of the hiking poems came from as well? Yes. Yeah, I could definitely identify with, I think it's hiking while old.

Marjorie Maddox (07:00)
Yes, yes, yes.

Yeah, yes,

I had these wonderful artists and a writer who were much younger than I am and we did some hiking together and boy, know, they were much faster than I was and they were very kind pretending to, you know, pause and tie their shoe, but they were really waiting for me to catch up. Yeah.

David J Bauman (07:28)
God, I was talking

to some of the students that I work with and I said, you know, there was a time when I did not worry about how I was gonna get across that, you know, just skip from stone to stone across the stream and jump up to the other bank. And now I find myself, I have to stop and think, okay, can my knee handle that amount of weight?

Marjorie Maddox (07:40)
Mm-hmm.

David J Bauman (07:49)
landing at that speed after this jump on that rock or am I going to end up in the middle of the stream?

Marjorie Maddox (07:49)
Yes.

I

a lot I think about pausing and slowing down and and I'd like what the the editor of Broadstone books said about it that it's also though about a sense of urgency and I think you see that in those three sections because there's social commentary and commentary on the environment and you know things that we can't wait around for at the same time slowing down.

David J Bauman (08:18)
Right. That's what I was

going to ask you about the sections. You have a love for, I know it'll come out as we talk about the different books too, you have a love for really having a theme in a book, but also having a real playful relationship with structure in the poems themselves. And I guess I think it's this one where, yeah, it's this book where

you have a great deal, you have a lot of sonnets. You have, I think the other book we were talking about, Seeing Things, is that the one where there are a lot of odes? Not just in that book though, yeah. But you also have some shaped poems and what appeared to be a free verse with almost forms, line forms that you kind of made up as you went that fit that individual poem.

Marjorie Maddox (08:50)
Yes. Yes.

David J Bauman (09:03)
And I love that sense of playfulness that you have with it and how that comes across on the page, as well as in reading it, adding this extra dimension. And is that kind of on purpose or is that something you're just drawn to?

Marjorie Maddox (09:15)
using the form is on. Yeah, I think sometimes it just happens and sometimes it feels like it just fits the form better, especially I think when you're dealing with difficult subject matter. Sometimes it's easier to put it into a fixed form. sometimes it just evolves like the poem, beyond this poem in hover here is calling for, you know, don't hide behind this poem, you know, get out and do something about the environment.

David J Bauman (09:16)
Yeah.

Marjorie Maddox (09:41)
but I end each line with the word care and a different form of the word care. And that just kind of happened. Like I started the first couple of lines and then I thought, this is kind of a pattern. It's not a Sestina, but it's the same word.

David J Bauman (09:44)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I thought of that

as I was looking at it. this is sort of Sestina-like as I was reading it, the repetition of certain words.

Marjorie Maddox (10:02)
I guess with the curlew bird too in small earthly space. I was working with photographer Karen Elias, so I had these wonderful prompts. mean, sometimes the poem came first, sometimes the photograph came first, but that worked as a wonderful prompt for me to get writing. we also started, Karen found these fantastic, intriguing quotations about the curlew bird.

And we kind of went, we kind of went from there. And then we had from, I'm sorry, from Allie Smith's companion piece. And then all of a sudden we just, I started writing more and more curlew bird poems. And then that became kind of, the bird became kind of a guide through the book. So we didn't really set out thinking that was going to happen, but that's what evolved.

David J Bauman (10:50)
And I hadn't thought of that until now, but in a way that's a little bit like using a form. know some of the theme has come up multiple times throughout this season of how a form can be a container for emotions or things that you don't know how to say any other way, but then you have this structure to put it into.

Marjorie Maddox (11:02)
Right.

And I think typically I've written books that didn't I didn't necessarily think I had a theme. It was interesting that you said that. But like that that particular book Smaller Leaves Space, you know, we we I was very cognizant that it was going to be a book, you know, that these curlew birds were going to kind of come together. There's a lot of poppies in it. There's a lot of, you know,

playing off of poems that have already been written as opposed to other times I will just have lots of poems and then I gather them together and try to make sense of what kind of order they go in.

David J Bauman (11:43)
Well, I'm thinking,

and if you get the chance, you should look at Marjorie's, I'm talking to our listeners now, you should look at Marjorie's repertoire of books, because you had a great one that was thematically poems about teachers or on a tee from a teacher's point of view and working with students. You also had a book going way back, local news from someplace else. as it weekends at the cathedral where

Marjorie Maddox (12:07)
Yeah, we, we.

David J Bauman (12:08)
with

a great many spiritual poems and very playful poems too. know picturing the Christ as a figure on in the circus on the high wire kind of thing I remember. And that's.

Marjorie Maddox (12:20)
Yes, yes, I had

a long series of poems, how to fit God into a poem and.

David J Bauman (12:24)
Yeah, yeah. So you do, seem to, whether you intend to or not, you seem to gravitate toward that. It's kind of the fun of reading you and thinking, what is Marjorie writing about now?

but the curlew shows up in small earthly spaces. There's a lot of religious and mythologically religious symbolism on the curlew as well. I'm not as familiar with or wasn't as familiar with. I always learn something new when I'm reading your stuff too. That's part of the fun of those themes.

Marjorie Maddox (12:48)
Well, I always learn something too when I'm

writing it because I didn't really know very much about curlews at all or about there's a long poem on hollyhocks and there are lot of fables and myths that go along with hollyhocks.

David J Bauman (12:51)
Perfect.

Okay.

Hell yeah.

Marjorie Maddox (13:01)
One of the great things with having kind of a series is you always have something else you can keep writing about because you keep doing a little more research and you think, oh, well, that's another thing I could add in here. And so the series keeps expanding. so that's been a lot of fun too. But yeah, you kind of find out all the other meanings that have previously been associated with these things.

David J Bauman (13:24)
So you chose a poem from Seeing Things called Ode to Everything.

Marjorie Maddox (13:27)
Yes.

Yes, so maybe I'll say just a little bit about this book. It's probably the hardest book I've ever written. ⁓ And it's really about three generations of women. So daughter of a mother entering the early stages of dementia, mother of a daughter struggling with depression, and then woman kind of struggling with her own issues of survival in a world where truth and lie are very murky.

David J Bauman (13:36)
Really.

Marjorie Maddox (13:55)
⁓ So I wrote most of this at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and you know, it's pretty depressing material. So in order to kind of keep my sanity, I started writing a series of odes. ⁓ So I have maybe 10 or 12 odes throughout the book to give the reader a break, also to give me a break and give some perspective. So this is the very last poem in the book.

David J Bauman (13:55)
Mm.

Yeah.

Okay.

Marjorie Maddox (14:21)
and it's called Ode to Everything. Enough of the Lamentations. Open the window and sing. The world is awash with world. Color-dripping globe always tilting into some ⁓ or another. Clouds stretching wide plump happiness even in the noisy stage show of showers such sunny ovations.

and the birds. Overpopulating every poem, swoop here for free. Swallow, hawk, robin, gull, eagle. What else can be written but wings that wave horizon to horizon?

and enough of windows, praise doors, step out with arms open and eyes gathering vim and vision, grandeur trailing from worm and woodchuck, branch puzzles of woods, open boat of breeze, all brimming with hey and hallelujah and celebrate, such green giving of thanks, such miraculous mercy of earth, calm valley and even this

rugged rocky chain we climb now as family, claiming praise as respite, holding close each breaking day, dangerous yet divine in all its gorgeous glory.

David J Bauman (15:55)
I love that all brimming with hey and hallelujah. That's such a great line. And this,

this is an ode and an ode to everything but there's references to other poems we may be familiar with even if they're just kind of vague references kind of like in the poem that I read

in how we are found. It's talking about that mindfulness moment. And I think we're referring in some ways, or at least to the spirit of the kind of poem written by a poet that we all know and love, who may teach us a lesson about lying in the grass and looking at a bug, in this case a slug. And I love that you're playful with that, I think, while honoring it.

Marjorie Maddox (16:32)
you

David J Bauman (16:37)
at the same time, which that's tricky to do to play on what someone else has done and say, you know, enough of this sort of thing. Not to that mindfulness moment. And yet you're honoring it and having a mindfulness moment while you're saying that.

but looking at it in new ways and you know not just looking at the windows but looking at doors. Let's keep looking at noticing new things which is taking the lessons of those poets I think and putting them to use not just. Right.

Marjorie Maddox (17:03)
Yeah, persevering, keep

going. You can easily drown in some of this stuff, right? Because life is very hard, obviously, we all know that. And I don't think that we just skim over that.

David J Bauman (17:12)
Right.

Marjorie Maddox (17:20)
We also, you know, kind of keep going. And I think that poem is kind of an encouragement to self and maybe encouragement to all that despite everything, there's all this grandeur going on too.

David J Bauman (17:32)
Yeah,

yeah. And so it works on, I think, the level of the living experience as well as the encouragement to the artist. Yeah.

Marjorie Maddox (17:44)
Yeah, and most of my poems have that kind of connection between the natural and the spiritual worlds. And so I think, you know, we're going back and forth between those. we're always in the middle of those, you know.

David J Bauman (17:55)
Yeah,

when I was talking about that me, you, us kind of thing, there was a poem that we had read by Liesl Mueller when I had an episode with my friend Joel recently. What was the poem? Monet Refuses the Operation. where you see that

the divisions between things aren't necessarily there, let alone aren't necessarily needed, you know, and liking to see the connection. you take away the ivy over the bridge, instead of seeing the bridge and the ivory all as one thing, yeah. And I feel that as I'm reading through some of these works.

Marjorie Maddox (18:22)
Yes.

Yeah,

and that definitely comes out with all the curlew poems too, that idea of unzipping the sky, you know, the curlew walks on that tightrope between eternity, between the natural and the spiritual worlds.

David J Bauman (18:48)
Did you think at all

of the the tide rises the tide falls? And then the next line, what is it? The something in the curlew calls. I can't remember the exact. I used to know that one by heart. The tide rises, the tide falls. listeners, if you know it, quote it. And then it's about the curlew call. Feel free to click on that link at the bottom that says text the show.

Marjorie Maddox (18:54)
no I didn't, but I like that.

Yeah. Please help us out. ⁓

David J Bauman (19:15)
Tell me the line. I could Google it and edit that in between, but it's more fun getting your feedback, But yeah, that's that's part of something that intrigues me about this. This whole project. Where we're looking at poems. By a particular poet and each getting a chance to read one, but then also looking at a poem by someone else that inspires you, whether it's.

from a poet long dead or a poet who is a colleague is in the case here with you today, but we're all kind of living in that same spiritual, physical world of art and literature as well. None of it happens, as I've said before, in a vacuum. So it's interesting to see the interrelations.

Marjorie Maddox (19:53)
how they resonate

with each other is wonderful.

David J Bauman (19:56)
Yeah.

And so you were drawn to a poem by Laura Reese Hogan to share with us.

Marjorie Maddox (20:04)
Yes, and I love Laura's work and this is the title poem for her from her book Litany of Flights which also won the Peraclete Poetry Prize a few years ago. And there's so many things that I really like about it. One of the things I really like is that it kind of

mirrors the process that poets go through, I think, because you're always looking at different angles at an object or even a word, the different different definitions all the nuances of what a word can mean. And again, you with this poem, you have that combination of

the intertwining of suffering and joy, think too. And of course, you know, for, I was thinking of you too with birds. So have lots of birds in this.

David J Bauman (20:45)
Yeah.

Yes, I was delighted that

you had me at scrub jay in the first line.

Marjorie Maddox (20:56)
Yeah, other

kinds of flights too, you know, the flights that we take as humans and airplanes and Icarus and everything else. So litany of flights. First, the winged moment, steady, forward, scrub jays and flitting progress, hawks and predator glide, a ringing up, a knife sharp slope down. Second, the effortless type.

David J Bauman (21:00)
Yeah.

Marjorie Maddox (21:25)
Wind-splayed, motionless pinions and thermal recline. As the psalmist says, blessings breeze his love, even in sleep. Third, the hungry against the gale, the destination singular and the sun dipping crimson. Fourth, the metallic business or pleasure. Fifth, the worrying kind all hummingbird, a picnic

Apples and chocolate in the garden with roses, both flower and child. You miss it when it's gone. Six, a baffling flight of stairs winding upward passage and yet vehicle spiraling to unseen landings. Hope courses in the kaleidoscopic lights. Seventh, soar to the sun. Eighth, melt in bitter hubris. You know the story. Ninth, escape.

A flight out of Egypt, a path, a path through the sea cleared by divine hand. The times you ran, the times you are left behind in lament. Tenth, only rotting in the belly of a whale, tames your stubborn turn from Nineveh. Eleventh, flights of despair and of yearning, two sides of one letting go, hard earned release back into the wild.

unbound by expectation, feather-like. Twelfth, in a moment caught up by the beloved, the one making all things work together, wings, body, arch, air, caught up like the Shulamite Bride to regions beyond aeronautical wisdom, transported in joy. See, he says, the painful pairing of your hollow bones.

has made you light.

love that ending. And it's kind of painful, though, too, because nobody, of course, wants to suffer. But then you have this sense of even out of that can come some kind of flight. And the positive and the negative connotations of flight, all these different kinds of flight, there's just so many variations. ⁓

David J Bauman (23:40)
Yeah, you never think about,

with the biblical imagery, never think about Jonah and the whale, his flight from Nineveh was actually the opposite of what you would think of as a bird's flight, as he's underwater, you know, in the fish's belly, or in the whale.

Marjorie Maddox (23:51)
Great.

Yeah,

the flight's away, but the flight tours, the flight's up.

David J Bauman (23:59)
And the flight

of stairs. Talk about talk about wordplay. You had mentioned in the one collection being a lot of wordplay. And I love this that there's wordplay, but it's also, as you said, very heavy stuff

Marjorie Maddox (24:01)
Yes.

And there's always transformation. I think that's one of the things that really makes a poem work is you are in a different place at the end of the poem than you were at the beginning.

David J Bauman (24:23)
Yeah,

that's one place where I don't have to even say what drew you to this poem. I can see a lot of your own kind of inspirations in here, not just with the word play, but with that connection of the spiritual and physical.

Marjorie Maddox (24:28)
Okay.

Yes, yeah, I think we have, we deal with a lot of similar kind of themes or issues and love of language, yes.

David J Bauman (24:44)
And we thank Laura for allowing us to use her poem so you had mentioned that now you are kind of taking a project break. I know you're not necessarily good at sitting still. So what does that break consider?

Marjorie Maddox (24:57)
No, well,

David J Bauman (24:59)
consist of

Marjorie Maddox (24:58)
I guess I'm taking a little bit of a break from putting together another collection. I have a bunch of poems and I'm still writing. But, you know, with all these books going on at the same time, it's been crazy. Like March, I think I have 10 events going on. So it's just been a lot of kind of back and forth. But it's also been invigorating, you know, and has connected me to all kinds of communities and

David J Bauman (25:03)
Gotcha.

I'm sure.

Marjorie Maddox (25:22)
that's been very uplifting and exciting. So I'm, you know, I won't get back to putting that book together. I have some ideas, but I'm just not in the place of wanting to sit down and put them together right at this point, because I think I just need a break from the marketing part. Of course, it might take 10 years to get the next one. you know, I don't have too much of a break.

David J Bauman (25:29)
Ha ha ha ha!

Another, yeah, another poet. Well, I think we go in stages sometimes. Well,

I think it's really rare that I've been in a stage between like where I'm, I'm both getting things published and heavily writing.

Yeah.

Marjorie Maddox (25:55)
Well, it's a different kind of energy, right? I mean,

and you have experienced the same kind of thing. You put on the marketing hat or you put on this mission hat and the business hat, which I don't, you know, I prefer the writing hat. But, you know, for a while.

David J Bauman (26:03)
Yeah.

Right. But sometimes when I,

yeah, when I can't get myself into one of the writing head space, I try to make myself do one of the others. So, exactly. Exactly.

Marjorie Maddox (26:18)
Right. And then you still feel like you're being productive at least. Sometimes it's

the procrastination. Sometimes when I can't write, then I'll do the other stuff. And sometimes when I don't feel like, you know, doing the marketing or doing the submission stuff, then I actually procrastinate by writing a poem, which is really strange.

David J Bauman (26:36)
⁓ At least you get a balance that way.

So what thoughts do you want to leave our?

our listeners on other than, know, buy some of these books and I will put links. I will put links in in the show notes so people can do that as well so they can take a look at the beautiful words you've been putting out.

Marjorie Maddox (26:52)
I guess

maybe a plug too just for the Keystone Poetry Anthology and all the fantastic poets yourself and Micah included, you know, in the state. I know this goes out all across the country, but, you know, think about the Pennsylvania poets too.

David J Bauman (27:03)
yeah.

And poems of place. No matter where they're from, I am intrigued by especially when the poet can make you feel like you're in Arizona, maybe when you've never been there. Yeah, yes.

Marjorie Maddox (27:14)
yes.

so much to identity. It just is part of who we are.

David J Bauman (27:24)
Well, thank you for being here and thanks for sharing some poems. It certainly has been luck with the rest of your activities in March. And as you had said, keep keep

Marjorie Maddox (27:26)
I'm so happy. This has been fun.

Yeah, thank you so much, David.

David J Bauman (27:36)
I appreciate it. Thanks Marjorie.

Marjorie Maddox (27:38)
Bye bye.

David (27:39)
Our three poems this week were How We Are Found by Marjorie Maddox from one of her recent collections Hover Here that was read by me and Ode to Everything from Seeing Things, also a recent collection by Marjorie, read by Marjorie Maddox herself. Our third poem read by Marjorie was called Litany of Flights by Laura Reese Hogan. And thank you to Laura for permission to use the poem on the show.

For updates about upcoming episodes, can follow us on Instagram, Facebook, or Blue Sky. And next week, we'll be talking with Saddiq Dzukogi you are enjoying the podcast, you could make a difference by leaving a review on Apple podcasts or giving us a rating on Spotify. Thank you so much for doing that. I'm David J. Bauman. Thanks for joining us again for A Conversation in Three Poems.