Intro (00:00)
Welcome to In Three Poems, where each episode we talk with a guest poet, read two poems by them, and one by a poet of their choice, and we explore what connections the works may have. Coincidentally, our guest today, Jessica Whipple, has chosen a poem by first season guest Grant Clauser. I'm your host, David J. Bauman. Jessica Whipple writes for adults and children. Her poetry has been published most recently in Paddler Press, Wild Roof Journal.

Philadelphia Stories, Gastronomica, the Journal of Food Studies, Anti-Heroin Chic, Pine Hills Review, and One Art. And by the way, if you enjoy this podcast, help us get noticed by more people by giving us a review on Apple or Spotify. And if you just want to talk to us, send us a message by clicking on the Text the Show link down in the show notes.

David (00:49)
And so we are talking to Jessica Whipple today. I mentioned Jessica about children's books that you've written. Tell us about those if you would.

Jessica (00:59)
Sure.

I will put them on the screen. there's two. There's I think I think a lot, which is written by me, Jessica Whipple, illustrated by Jose Bissillon, and published by Free Spirit Publishing. That is a book about a girl who compares the way that her brain seems to work, to the way that her peers' brain seems seem to work. And

David (01:20)
Mm.

Jessica (01:22)
know, she she's troubled by the things that she sort of gets hung up on, but ultimately she discovers that

The way she is made is beautiful and there are good things about it. And that actually I I'll say more about this later if you want me to, but it sort of came out of a an appointment with my therapist. Anyway, that's that's I think I think a lot. This is Enough Is, which is again written by me, Jessica Whipple, illustrated by Nicole Wong, and that one's published by Tilbury House. That's about the concept

David (01:51)
Very nice.

Jessica (01:52)
of enough and how that's kind of hard to define.

And it kind of changes based on what you're talking about. There's like a fuzzy line between wants and needs. Sometimes

David (02:03)
Yeah.

Jessica (02:03)
a want can feel like a need, and sometimes if you want

David (02:05)
Mm.

Jessica (02:06)
something really badly, it kind of controls you. there's metaphor or actually simile in there. so so if you're a poem person

David (02:12)
Lots of lots of the best children's books are yeah, as well

so so so many of the the best children's books I've read to my my kids. You can tell that there there's a poetic element to it.

I I do see a connection in a lot of ways. Maybe part of it's the short form, I wanted to ask you what what what do you think

What's the bridge from you're publishing a lot of in a lot of literary magazines lately, and poetry. And

Jessica (02:36)
Yeah. Thank you.

David (02:38)
so what what do you think what led you from writing some children's books into publishing poetry?

Jessica (02:44)
So I was writing poetry in high school.

David (02:47)
Mm.

Jessica (02:49)
I don't know if you remember being from Pennsylvania, but do you remember the Pennsylvania governor's schools?

David (02:53)
Yeah.

Jessica (02:54)
Yeah, so I went to the Pennsylvania Governor School for the Arts and High School for creative writing. and

David (02:58)
wonderful. What a great opportunity.

Jessica (03:00)
so I was there for six weeks just writing and doing other arts related things. We did ceramics and photography, but I was one of ten poets to be accepted that year. And sadly those programs don't exist anymore. They were quite expensive. we lived Mercyhurst College for six weeks, so we were completely roomed and boarded.

But anyway, so I did that in high school. in college I felt like I didn't really have anything to say. I

David (03:29)
Mm.

Jessica (03:30)
felt inexperienced at life and so didn't feel like I really had anything that I needed to share.

David (03:36)
Mm.

Jessica (03:37)
And so I didn't write for myself creatively for a long time. I worked at an ad agency and majored in college in communications with a focus in advertising and I thought maybe that's the way I would use my creativity. Like if I didn't have my own ideas, somebody could tell me what to write about and then I could write it. and

David (03:59)
Mm.

Jessica (04:00)
so that's what I did for a while, until we had babies. And when

David (04:03)
Mm.

Jessica (04:04)
we had babies we had books around.

All the time. And I got the idea for Enough Is and just kind of wondered what it takes to write a picture book. And so once to shorten that part of the story, once I got published and and sold two picture books, I was already kind of into poetry again. I was experimenting and sort of just started writing that again.

Here I am, I guess, just sort of filling in the time with poems 'cause they're much what they can be quicker to write, they're not always quicker to write.

David (04:40)
it's cool th though that you started with poetry and then went to children's books, you know, And then finding poetry again. I know the stuff that I wrote in high school was just

Teenage angst and sappy romance

Jessica (04:52)
yeah, me too.

David (04:53)
and not very good. So I wished I'd had a good poetry teacher back then, but they didn't even teach, and I'm gonna say bad things about the Pennsylvania schools when I was there. I'm a little a little bit more rural than where you were, a little bit, not much probably. But I discovered Shakespeare's s sonnets on my own in my senior year. I mean, we studied

Jessica (05:13)
Mm.

David (05:14)
Macbeth and Julius Caesar.

But I don't know why I didn't have any classes about the sonnets and then I found them on my own and I thought, holy cow, you can write like this? This is amazing.

Jessica (05:23)
Yeah.

David (05:24)
And and that's kind of where my poetry maybe started to begin to at least see a future where it might be not crap.

Jessica (05:35)
Okay.

David (05:37)
But that's all right. I I think

is it Billy Collins who says you have at least 300 really bad poems in you before you write your first good one? I don't know if that's I don't know if that's true.

Jessica (05:45)
boy.

David (05:47)
if that's true, I probably have some amazing genius stuff coming up yet. No, I don't know.

Jessica (05:51)
I have not written three hundred, so I'm still in the bad area.

David (05:56)
I really have enjoyed and the part of the fun of this show too, is that it takes me back to days when I used to record people's poems just for fun on the internet.

I get to read the first one. We do three. first two by our guest poet and I choose one, you choose one. And then

I always ask you to pick something by somebody else. and so we'll have that third poem. who your choice for today's was a guest in the first season of this podcast, Grant Clauser. So so we'll get to that in a minute. But do you mind if I just jump right in and read this poem and then we'll talk about it? All

Jessica (06:31)
Yeah, please do.

David (06:33)
right. And this one, where was this published?

Jessica (06:35)
Wild Roof Journal.

David (06:37)
beautiful artistry on that journal as well.

And this is something I think any of us maybe can identify with, most of us can identify with. Poem on the last day of my thirties.

I find a can of beans in the kitchen. Great Northern, left there open the night before. They're past their prime now, into the trash they go. I'm ashamed of the waste. I didn't intend to wake, wondering if I've spent well the years in this vessel. But sometimes a question needs to be left out on the counter to know what should be done.

with it in the morning.

It seems so simple but

when you read free verse and you're thinking, What's the form here? what's the method? I love that they're very short sentences in the first stanza. And even in the second there there's the well, no, it's in that first, in that third line, where there's that lovely little fragment of into the trash they go.

Jessica (07:44)
Mm-hmm.

David (07:46)
Because there's something about that that mirrors how I feel when I wake up in the morning. And I've had

Jessica (07:51)
Yeah. There was an actual can of beans.

David (07:56)
Well, see, we live on different schedules here at our house. My my husband Brian sometimes is up working on music much later and I go to bed. And I tend to cook, but if we're not eating at the same time, I try to like make him a plate and put it away, but I'll ask him, Hey, are you gonna

be up for a while. Should I leave this out or can I put it away? And it kills you when you wake up in the morning. Because first of all, especially these days, groceries are so damn expensive anyhow.

Jessica (08:22)
And there's a moment when

you think, like, maybe I can and then you remember about all of the things you've learned about what happens if you eat food that's been left out. And the different

David (08:30)
Yes.

Jessica (08:31)
things that grow on rice that are different than the things that grow on pasta.

David (08:36)
And how

none of this mattered when you

Jessica (08:38)
No.

David (08:39)
were in college in your twenties and the pizza was out there on the table for the night before.

Jessica (08:44)
Yeah.

David (08:45)
breakfast pizza, that might be okay. Even cold.

Jessica (08:47)
Well,

David (08:50)
That'll be fine, right?

Jessica (08:51)
Yeah.

David (08:53)
so maybe there's a little bit of that that it happens in your 30s to 40. I mean you're you're trying to be responsible now and you know more now.

Jessica (09:02)
Yeah, well it

probably was never true for me that I would eat a pizza that was out all night 'cause I have O C D and that

David (09:09)
yeah.

Jessica (09:09)
would keep me from crossing that boundary.

David (09:11)
I I think it's

weird. I I would be particular about certain things and then other things I never thought of. And then until years later I thought, my god, it's a wonder I'm still alive. Some of the things

Jessica (09:24)
Yeah.

David (09:25)
I did when I was young and stupid. But you have those simple three lines in the f the first stanza, and then the the the second is four lines. And I don't know if I'm reading too much into it, but truth is truth and

I love the fact that it's three for thirties, four for forties. Just tell me it was intended and that's fine. I'll tell everybody how brilliant that was.

Jessica (09:47)
Yeah, that's actually No, I didn't.

David (09:52)
But see, that's what some of the fun is when you when you do this sort of thing, and other

Jessica (09:57)
Yeah.

David (09:57)
people like will say, Hey, I really love that this was in there. And in my mind I'm going, my god, that was in my poem.

Jessica (10:04)
Right. I know it's very

like embarrassing slash flattering.

David (10:08)
I know, but you would be surprised. That's a theme that comes up a lot. it happens so often. And I just I've used that phrase, I think I stole it from from some TV show somewhere that truth is truth. So s there are a lot of those subconscious things that work. They're they're the things we do on purpose. Like some of the things I think you did on purpose were some of the the sounds ashamed.

Waste wake. I mean you have those

Jessica (10:32)
Mm-hmm. Definitely.

David (10:34)
are but they don't feel like on purpose. I think like someone who's just hearing it and who's not a poet themselves thinking, you know, but waste wake even the W in wandering. I love that kind of subtle music. and even even this that off rhyme from vessel to question, those kind of things

Jessica (10:51)
Mm-hmm.

David (10:52)
that kind of pull you through a line fascinate me.

And especially, I think that first stanza, the the fact that there's short sentences and fragments, it just very much mirrors how I am when I wake up in the morning and I haven't had my coffee yet. I've said it's hard to make a cup of coffee when you haven't had your coffee yet.

Jessica (11:09)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

David (11:13)
If you've ever like started the coffee maker without water in it or without coffee in it and just made hot water.

Jessica (11:18)
Yes. Mm-hmm.

David (11:21)
you then transition into course the metaphor of the can of beans that vessel being have I what have I wasted of myself? What

Jessica (11:32)
Mm-hmm.

David (11:33)
have I left out on the counter? And I love that.

Jessica (11:36)
Thank you. Yep. It

Yeah. when I wrote this I didn't really have any specific experiences in mind that appeared to me like waste.

David (11:48)
But that's a common thing when you get to a certain age and you're like

Jessica (11:51)
yeah,

and and like I know it's there. I know I have wasted gifts and blessings and moments and goodness I've wasted so much time. it was just something that I guess I was thinking about that milestone morning.

David (12:08)
Yeah.

Yeah, it is it is it for you for me it's it's it's the fives and the zeros that are the hardest.

Jessica (12:15)
Yeah, I've never

I didn't really think much about turning thirty. That was fun. We went to a restaurant, I had a cool dress. forty

David (12:23)
Yeah.

Jessica (12:25)
my husband made a really nice put a gathering together. It was a surprise and that was lovely, but I think a lot about forty now that I'm past forty.

David (12:35)
Mm.

Jessica (12:36)
So yeah, I guess I'll I'll be thinking about that can of beans often.

David (12:41)
By

the time I turned 42, I was single again and I decided to have my second 21st birthday party because

Jessica (12:49)
Whoop!

David (12:50)
because I didn't really have one when I was 21.

Jessica (12:55)
Wow.

David (12:56)
And so I had a couple of friends assigned to get me to bed at the end of it,

Jessica (13:00)
Yeah.

David (13:00)
and they fell asleep before I did, and I was living

Jessica (13:03)
my.

David (13:04)
in this little apartment that was not.

greatest place in the world, but it had a wonderful back balcony that kind of looked had a beautiful view and you could get out onto the the roof of the buildings nearby and stuff. And

Jessica (13:16)
Wow.

David (13:17)
I was just sitting out there happy, like, hey, life's not so bad. Yeah, exactly. My second my second twenty first. And we're not gonna

Jessica (13:21)
Forty two slash twenty one. Okay. Well good.

David (13:29)
say like when the third twenty first is gonna be because it's it's closer than I'd like to admit.

Jessica (13:34)
Well

I'm forty two now, so maybe I should work on planning that event.

David (13:38)
There go. Yeah.

now that my dad is ninety three and I'm

and I think steel plates in each foot and a knee surgery upcoming and nerve damage on my left hand, I'm thinking, I don't know if I can survive that long. I don't know if I want to.

No, it's funny how the perspective changes a little bit. I think I've lived a good life. It's okay. All right.

Jessica (14:03)
You have more poems to write.

David (14:06)
Fair enough. That that's that actually is one thing that does bring me back to. And speaking of more poems, what else did you want to say about this one before you read one for us?

Jessica (14:14)
I guess that just it's one of those ones that surprised me. It's

David (14:18)
Mm-hmm.

Jessica (14:18)
not often that a poem just comes out with minimal revision, but this is one of those times it's hard to take credit for that because, you know, where do ideas come from? Where do words come from? It's I don't know. But yeah,

David (14:32)
I love it that when it happens, but it's so rare, isn't it?

Jessica (14:35)
and you can't

will it to happen, you can only wish it to happen, and don't do that too often or you won't write a single thing.

David (14:43)
Well,

that's a good point. I think Mary Oliver's she has a poetry handbook, I think it's Mary Oliver's poetry handbook,

Jessica (14:49)
Mm.

David (14:50)
where she mentions showing up on a regular basis. Maybe, you know, for her it was every day, her walks in the morning with the the journal and whatnot. but whatever your thing is, if is y you're showing up and doing doing the thing regularly.

I think of William Stafford,

Jessica (15:03)
Mm.

David (15:04)
who's one of my heroes, that that there's no way I could do what he was doing. He was by the time he died, he was writing a poem a day. But I think

Jessica (15:11)
goodness.

David (15:11)
like she said something about if if you show up on a regular basis, the Muse kind of finally realizes, okay, well, he's serious, so I'll show up too. But I think

Jessica (15:20)
Hmm.

David (15:20)
part of that is just the process of Robert Bly said about William Stafford that every poem he wrote took him his whole life up to that point to write it. And so I think

Jessica (15:29)
yeah.

David (15:29)
When you're in the groove and you've already got you're walk taking a walk with the dog and you're thinking about the the flags on the street or or the flowers that are there and your brain is already thinking and you're if you're in poetry mode and then doing something with that, know, it doesn't I don't I don't know that it necessarily has to be daily. everybody's a little different.

Jessica (15:51)
Yeah.

David (15:52)
But I think when you're constantly doing something, you're tapping into a stream that's maybe a little easier to tap into and once in a while it just kinda comes out like that. I've had that happen only

Jessica (16:03)
Yeah.

David (16:05)
with a couple of poems and so it's a good feeling when it happens. But I think it

Jessica (16:10)
Well, I don't have a

David (16:11)
means you were in the groove somehow.

Jessica (16:13)
I I don't know if I was just feeling a lot.

David (16:16)
Mm.

Jessica (16:17)
and when I'm feeling a lot, it's easy to document it, I guess. but I don't have a rhythm and I don't have a a practice really.

David (16:29)
It

I don't think I do either.

Jessica (16:32)
Okay. Yeah.

Yeah.

David (16:35)
Like I have ideas of a practice. I don't want to s do that thing. But

Jessica (16:38)
Yeah. Right.

David (16:40)
well it's i the other thing is though too, it's good if you can get that out and then later you go back and you're able to I I think that's also something that William Stafford had mentioned that he only did the editing and such later. You know, you let it

Jessica (16:56)
Yeah. Yeah.

David (16:58)
come out first and then you go back and see, okay

What did this want to do? What does this want what works here?

Jessica (17:06)
Yeah, and and the occasion of letting it come out isn't very often once. It's usually days and days and then long breaks and then a revision, a revisit and a revision. so yeah. It's just different with every poem. That's reassuring.

David (17:19)
Yeah. Yeah. And that's how you know you that's how you know you're a poet. Because because the well the and maybe

not just the revision but but editing, however you want to look at it,

the editing and revising and going back and what I end up with might be very different or or not on those rare occasions, you know,

Jessica (17:42)
Yeah.

David (17:43)
from what I started, you you might be agonizing for a long time over a comma.

So tell me about the poem that you chose for today.

Jessica (17:50)
I chose Mother Coyote Explains a Wildlife Crossing. And I wrote this poem after a

One of the rattle prompts, Rattle Poetry magazine has a weekly opportunity for poets to write about something that's happened in the prior week's news. And I was reading about a wildlife crossing, the largest wildlife crossing in California, I think it's near San Diego, was being built. And I think it was like the groundbreaking. It's not done yet, but it'll be done soon. so I wrote about that. You write the poem, you send the link to the

news story and they pick one news story every month or every week rather and it didn't get picked but every time

David (18:34)
Yeah.

Jessica (18:35)
I have written for this prompt I get a poem out of it you know so even if it doesn't get picked you get a poem.

David (18:41)
I so admire

that because I I'm never I never get it done in time for stuff like that. Like if I write something about current news,

Jessica (18:48)
I don't know. I need the motivation.

David (18:50)
it's gonna get done like 10 years later and it's no longer current. I'm exaggerating, but just a little. I admire that.

Jessica (18:53)
Yeah. geez. Yeah. So

so oftentimes I get a poem well, I get a poem out of it every time, but oftentimes I place that poem elsewhere. and this is one of those instances where I submitted it to Ekstasis, which is it's not really

literary magazine anymore, but it was a literary offshoot of Christianity today and

David (19:19)
Mm, mm-hmm.

Jessica (19:20)
this one appeared online. So should I read it?

David (19:23)
Sure, and we'll put links there in the show notes if anybody wants to read along, they can do that too.

Jessica (19:27)
Good okay.

Mother Coyote explains a wildlife crossing. It is new like you are new, yet it is again and again is open. It is there like the water is there, and always like weather. Because of it, only is gone. It's been replaced by over.

which before this was something only mountains gave us. Yes, there will be lost. We'll slink under its fog until we raise our heads to see all of where and where is worth seeing. Where is quiet, but it will awaken and surge, and you will, too. Thank you.

David (20:13)
Nice.

yeah. You know, I end up talking way too much about birds in my nature walks and stuff in my in these podcasts. But but I think those who might turn their nose up at nature poetry, and don't we have more important things to well no, because we actually are na natural creatures ourselves.

Jessica (20:32)
Mm-hmm.

David (20:33)
You know, we're I think a lot of the reason we're in the situation that we're in is because we're we've looked at it man against nature somehow instead of, you know, humans are part of the natural world and whether or not you're looking at it in a scientific view or a religious view where you have where the caretakers of the garden, you know, we're supposed to be, part of this ecosystem and

taking care of it, And so nowadays if you're if you're on any sort of roadway that's even just outside of the city, it's hard not to see wildlife trying to cross, or that failed to cross.

Jessica (21:05)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

David (21:08)
I think that was another thing for a while there there were probably a lot of poems after William Stafford's

poem about the deer being hit. And I know I have one or two deer poems myself and anyone who lives in a rural area, if you haven't gotten a deer poem yet, you probably will end up writing a deer poem in your life.

Jessica (21:26)
Yeah, and I could because recently we had a pie bald deer that was mostly white was shot for no reason.

David (21:33)
Mm.

Jessica (21:34)
Yeah, it's awful.

David (21:35)
Yeah.

Jessica (21:36)
Yeah.

David (21:37)
and the coyotes around here people don't realize too, like like the birds, you might not think you have coyotes around you and you're in a like city area, but you might be surprised because

Jessica (21:50)
I did

see one once in the middle of the night when we were living in Pittsburgh. I saw one walking down our street. It was amazing.

David (21:56)
Yeah. And they

they they find a way to, you know, make themselves at home and and it's hard not to when we've taken over, you know, so much of their habitat, first of all, but also they can adapt whether or not they're going through our garbage or, those kind of things. And they're ruled by scent There are some places here where I go hiking and at the end of the day you can hear them.

Jessica (22:19)
wow.

David (22:19)
And

so this, yeah, right out of a a news story. And the form in this, again, there's this simplicity, but also when you're trying to think like if an animal were to communicate this to another animal, obviously this is our interpretation of it as a human.

But the simplicity of it is is fun. I'm sure it had to be fun to play with.

Jessica (22:43)
Yeah. I've I've never written a poem from the perspective of an animal.

David (22:49)
Yeah, I mean it's a whole different level of a persona poem, isn't it? I have

Jessica (22:52)
Yeah. Yeah. and I'm thinking

about Michael Garrigan, who I think his most recent collection has some animals from or some poems from the perspective of an animal and a t there's so much you can do. There's always so many poems to write and so many ways to write them. This was a fun example to myself that I don't always have to write the same way. So

David (23:15)
Yeah.

Jessica (23:16)
I think I'll try to do this more often.

David (23:18)
Yeah, I have to try this too, as much as I talk about birds.

I mean, obviously it's not thought exactly like that, but we don't know what an animal thinks. And it's fun

Jessica (23:26)
Yeah.

David (23:27)
to to try to get inside, get s get outside of our own heads

With all the the birds that show up in my poems, I'm going to have to try it from that point of view.

Jessica (23:36)
And sometimes I get tired of my own voice. So this was

David (23:38)
Mm.

Jessica (23:38)
a way to get out of it.

David (23:41)
yeah. That's that's so honest and true. I that's better though than doing like, I think I'm terrible. I hate the sound of my voice. I'm not gonna write for a while. You know what I mean? You

Jessica (23:54)
Yeah.

David (23:55)
not that you'll say those words out loud, but maybe maybe that's part of why I go for these long streaks where I don't.

But I love that I I love this the repetition of it is again and again is open.

And the water

Jessica (24:06)
Thank you.

David (24:07)
and the weather and the only there's there's there's a certain music in that as well, in the rhythm that's created. and interesting looking at it is like before this was something only mountains gave us.

Jessica (24:19)
Mm.

David (24:19)
and it is fascinating that animals I mean they don't want to get hit

Jessica (24:22)
Right.

David (24:23)
you've seen maybe that thing on Instagram where it shows maybe something of a deer and it says the deer is not crossing the road, the road is crossing the forest.

Jessica (24:33)
Mm.

David (24:34)
and that's another way of pulling yourself out of our own way of of looking at things. And where is worth seeing? Where is quiet? But it will awaken and surge, and you will too. Lovely poem.

Jessica (24:49)
Thank you.

David (24:49)
You're very welcome. So

In your your choice then to read by another poet, it doesn't surprise me necessarily now that you chose Grant Clauser and another animal poem.

Jessica (25:00)
Mm-hmm.

David (25:01)
and this one about flying squirrels, which is something that I haven't seen in quite a few years. but I've heard some people report, that they're still around, but they've they've been sort of a I guess I don't know if they're on the endangered list.

Jessica (25:14)
Mm.

David (25:14)
necessarily,

but they're there definitely fewer of them in Pennsylvania than I remember from when I was a child, at least.

Jessica (25:21)
Yeah, I've never I've never seen one in Pennsylvania. The only time I've seen one was this summer in California.

David (25:27)
Mm.

Jessica (25:28)
and it was really fun to see. I took a picture. as a children's book author, there's a book called My Cousin Momo and it's about a flying squirrel by

David (25:36)
Uh-huh.

Jessica (25:36)
Zachariah O'Hora. so that was fun. I feel like I saw Momo. Yeah.

David (25:41)
That's great.

and so Grant, he's he's talked to me about how often he just kind of packs up and

disappears into the woods for long periods of time.

Jessica (25:52)
Mm-hmm.

David (25:53)
And these are the kind of beauties that he comes up with. What what what drew you to this piece? Or do you want to read it first and then tell me about that?

Jessica (25:59)
so

I've known Grant just on Twitter for a couple of years, but I saw him read and got to meet him in person recently when he came with Michael Garrigan and

David (26:14)
Mm.

Jessica (26:14)
I purchased his book Temporary Shelters. I don't remember no, he didn't read Watching a Flying Squirrel at that reading. I discovered it after reading through the book, the collection. So

I like nature poetry, and he writes a lot of that. I also

David (26:30)
Mm-hmm.

Jessica (26:30)
write about parenting a lot and this is also a parenting poem, so that's why I liked it. Should I read it? Okay.

David (26:37)
Sure, go right ahead.

Jessica (26:38)
So this is Watching a Flying Squirrel by Grant Clauser from his collection Temporary Shelters,

and that's from Cornerstone Press.

Watching a flying squirrel. It doesn't really fly, just falls better than the rest of us. A calculated leap across empty space from oak to pine to maple. Life is risk and love too.

Between one safe branch and the next uncertain one lies hard ground or rocks.

When my daughters were born, my wife and I imagined branch after branch for years within reach. Not the ones we fell short or that left us hanging by a claw. Now we talk about the years we spent on the ground, wondering how to get back to a place where everywhere we looked we saw trees.

David (27:36)
Mm.

Jessica (27:37)
Yeah. It's great.

David (27:40)
And thank you to to Grant for the permission to read the poem.

Jessica (27:44)
Yes, thank you, Grant.

David (27:48)
So what drew you to this piece?

Jessica (27:48)
I love

I love that he

He surprises me with where the poem is going.

David (27:54)
Mm-hmm.

Jessica (27:55)
And then when I get to the end, it's kind of like, how did I not know that's where this was going?

David (27:59)
Mm-hmm.

Jessica (28:00)
And that's a skill that I want to have as a poet. just a smooth transition from, you know

Concept or sort of context to the message of the poem. It's so effortless, but as a writer, it's not.

David (28:18)
Yeah.

Jessica (28:19)
There's a lot of work that has to be done to actually get that just right, and I think Grant has done that. I also can relate to the sense of just being surprised by

parenthood in so many

David (28:30)
Mm.

Jessica (28:30)
ways and maybe things not going the way you expect. at times looking around and wondering like how did we get here in good ways and bad ways, you know? Yeah, I just think it's really beautiful and it's yeah, it's just lovely.

David (28:44)
And

he has a way of starting with an image, and then just casually he doesn't announce well, and now's the metaphorical part where I apply it to my life. And he

Jessica (28:53)
Right. Yeah.

David (28:55)
doesn't he doesn't announce it that way or anything, but it just level it turns into it so lovely, in such a such an easy way. from

Jessica (29:02)
Yeah.

David (29:02)
and it's already set up, like you said, you didn't know that it was lines like

between one safe branch and the next uncertain one lies hard ground or rocks. You know,

Jessica (29:13)
Yes.

David (29:13)
and it's hard as a parent not to then see, yeah, I could this is I can learn from this. And then just that that turn is when my daughters were born. And so he he does it in a lot of poems, but it never feels

Contrived to me.

Jessica (29:31)
Right.

David (29:32)
it's like we we have to find our own thing, our own voice. But this is definitely one of Grant's things that he does really beautifully.

That I think he looks at something in nature honestly, doesn't try to anthropomorphize it,

Jessica (29:46)
Mm-hmm.

David (29:47)
or make it or see it only from a human point of view, but then he does go into something that you can't it's it's almost in inevitable. You can't help but think about your own life when you're watching this

Jessica (30:00)
Yes.

David (30:01)
wondrous thing that's happening in front of you.

Jessica (30:03)
Yeah. And something that Grant's poems challenge me to do as a writer, a lot of his poems don't have stanza breaks. Some do.

David (30:12)
Mm.

Jessica (30:13)
But were I writing this, I would have put a stanza break before when my daughters were born. But that doesn't serve the poem. It's so much stronger as one stanza. I'm holding it up. It's Yes.

David (30:23)
Yeah, the fact that it's right in the middle of a line. The sechure is,

yeah, there's there are two two beats before it, you know, or rocks.

Jessica (30:30)
Yeah. Yeah.

David (30:32)
And that's that's kind of I had a poetry teacher once who had had mentioned, look at each line how does it read on its own, aside from anything else. And so on this you see, or rocks when my daughters You know, and

Jessica (30:47)
Uh-huh.

David (30:49)
and you might not

be thinking of that consciously, but your eyes are picking things up and your emotions are picking things up that you might not otherwise, you know, a calculated leap across empty space. And I think one other thing that he's really good at that that same teacher had taught Just read the last word in each in each line, and you can get this mood and emotion of

Of your poems. And I see that with Grant stuff too. When you have falls, us, space. And so you're like, you're you're out there falling already at the very beginning of it. But then you're you've landed in Maple, and then all of a sudden you're between and next. And then there's the fear of the ground. And then, daughters. Wow,

Jessica (31:31)
Yeah.

David (31:32)
that turned. But then daughters imagined reach, short, claw, years, wandering.

Place looked trees. It's like if you could just do the poem in stream of consciousness way.

Jessica (31:45)
Like yeah. If you can minimize

David (31:47)
He's very good.

Jessica (31:48)
the poem to just the end words.

David (31:50)
Yeah,

he's very good with selecting selecting line endings, but doing it so well that you don't feel like don't feel like it's it's being done.

Jessica (31:59)
Right, and and on that note, and maybe to further your point, he ends in the middle of the phrase, which has a jumping quality to it,

David (32:09)
Yeah.

Jessica (32:10)
which I love.

David (32:11)
Yeah. Like with I mean, there are a few where you've got the maple and the ground are some very you know, but a lot of those are very uncertain endings.

Jessica (32:22)
Right.

David (32:22)
have those in jammed lines like that, it pulls you into the next.

Jessica (32:27)
Mm-hmm.

David (32:28)
And that's part of the fun too of trying to figure out how to read something like this. I mean I don't overthink it, but but sometimes I think in even my own poetry,

It's important to me to like why do I want this word? have to have at least a very strong feeling about it if I don't have in my mind why I want the line to end on a word that it does. And sometimes it's because I want to stress that word, or sometimes very often it's because I want to pull you into the next line, but I don't want to make you feel manipulated into that. So it's a very difficult thing. And I he just seems to do it with ease and then cranks out another book of them

Jessica (33:00)
He does.

David (33:03)
I'm so jealous. But

Jessica (33:04)
Yeah.

David (33:05)
I love Grant's writing. and I think maybe for him too, he spends a lot of time and he's he loves, loves his daughters, and you can tell that just talking with him or hearing him talk or being at one of his readings. but he also really loves his alone time out in the middle of nowhere, with a journal,

But I definitely see it's it's interesting of the two poems, as much of a nature poet poet as he is,

yours from the view of the animal and then his from the view of a parent in the woods.

the similarity really is only maybe in the in the topic.

Jessica (33:43)
Yeah.

David (33:43)
Very different ways of approaching. And that's some of the fun of this kind of conversation too, is not just how are they similar, but the differences and how they work and why they work are fascinating to me.

Jessica (33:54)
I think another difference is I think of Mother Coyote explains a wildlife crossing as almost a wish for her her young. I think of in the Bible there's the Hebrew blessing, which is a parent giving the blessing of what a child's future's going to be. so that's kind of

David (34:14)
You're thinking the Lord bless you and keep you.

Jessica (34:16)
Yeah, like that's the tone of this, like what a mother wants for her child.

David (34:20)
Mm.

Jessica (34:21)
Grant's poem is what parents think of about reflecting on their children's childhood.

David (34:30)
Yeah, that's a very g that's a very good point.

Jessica (34:32)
So and maybe that's maybe that's kind of subconsciously why I picked them. 'Cause I'm only thinking of that now.

David (34:36)
Interesting. No, that's

that's some that's some of the fun of of this sort of thing when you see the the connections and the differences.

there's there's this thing in libraries we call mirrors and windows,

Jessica (34:50)
Right.

David (34:50)
you want to see yourself in something that you're reading. You may not know that that's what you but you also want to see a window onto the rest of the world.

Jessica (34:59)
Mm-hmm.

David (34:59)
Or sometimes it's

a window on how somebody else is seeing something, And maybe when whether there's resolution in it or not, you know, there's something that helps your own soul keep moving. I'm not a spiritual person anymore, really, in in other ways, but in a sense of wonder in the natural world as well as in the poetry,

because there's there's this questioning that sometimes the questions are more important than the answers.

Jessica (35:23)
Yeah.

David (35:24)
I think I love that this is one that is so different and yet somehow it feels like a similar voice to me. You know, they don't feel like different people, and I haven't quite figured out why that is. yeah, absolutely.

Jessica (35:36)
Hmm, that's a compliment, thank you.

David (35:40)
Because there's a

There there's there's a searching. when you're you're starting off with the the image of what was left on the counter. Grant starting off with an image of a flying squirrel, and then it moves into very smoothly into, have I wasted my life? Like I've wasted these beans, or, you know,

Jessica (36:01)
Yeah. Yeah.

David (36:03)
this part of my life anyway. Or

Did I give my daughters a safe place to land? you know,

Jessica (36:08)
Yeah.

David (36:09)
what were those branches like? There's there's something similar going on there, even though they seem like vastly different poems, if that makes sense.

Jessica (36:15)
No, I think I think you're right. it's a little bit of regret, it's a little bit of nostalgia.

David (36:20)
Yes.

I think that's yeah, even though the way you're approaching it is different.

So you've been putting a lot of poems out there. look in the show notes for Jessica Whipple's website is authorjessicawipple.com. under the menu there you can look at the the children's books that we talked about, but you can also click on poetry and more and see a lot of the poems that are available online.

In the last couple of years that Jessica has published. So are you putting together a collection, do you think?

Jessica (36:47)
Yeah, I'm moving towards something.

David (36:50)
Ha ha ha.

Jessica (36:51)
I'm doing comp research, I'm putting a proposal draft together. I don't do things in a linear way, so I'm doing everything all at once, a little bit at a time. I know

David (37:03)
at once.

Jessica (37:03)
there's more to be written.

Yeah, I think if I were to

Pin it down thematically. It's ordinary life. a lot of motherhood, some faith, some just being a woman, but mostly just ordinary moments. and I'm not selling it well purposefully because I don't want to say

David (37:19)
Ha ha ha.

Jessica (37:20)
too much. but think I have it.

Like I I have the container that it's going

David (37:25)
But it's

Jessica (37:26)
to live in.

David (37:27)
But it's it's very sounds very much like that idea of no no ideas but in things.

Jessica (37:32)
Hmm.

David (37:33)
which is William Carlos Williams. That was

Jessica (37:36)
okay.

David (37:37)
that was his phrase, no ideas but in things, where you had it he was kind of rebelling against maybe, but or at least that was his take on you had T. S. Elliott with these big lofty themes and lots

Jessica (37:49)
Yeah.

David (37:49)
of

allusions to other art and

Jessica (37:52)
Yeah.

David (37:53)
other languages and he just wanted to write about the, you know, well what what do I get out of looking at this wheelbarrow or these plums or I'm waking up before the rest of the family and dancing in front of the mirror, you know, those kind of things. And

Jessica (38:05)
Yeah.

David (38:06)
I'm more of a William Carlos Williams person myself. So well

Jessica (38:10)
Two. Yeah.

David (38:11)
thank you for being with me on the podcast.

Jessica (38:14)
It's an honor to be here. I'm super excited. I'm gonna keep listening to all of the podcast episodes that I haven't caught up with yet, so

David (38:22)
it's

it's it's a lot. That's why I need to break I thought the the the seasons were gonna be a little too long at first, so we're breaking them into maybe like twelve in a row with an eight week break, so we all have time to catch up. Myself

Jessica (38:33)
I see. Yeah.

David (38:38)
included. Thank you so much for being part of it. I really appreciate it, Jessica. And I look forward

Jessica (38:41)
Thank you.

David (38:43)
to reading more of your poems and seeing, you know, what what comes about as far as a collection sometime. you take care.

Jessica (38:47)
Thanks.

You too. Bye.

Outro (38:51)
You've been listening to In Three Poems. If you'd like to support the show, go to our coffee page. That's ko-fi.com slash in three poems, or just click on the link down in the show notes where it says support the show. And a big thank you for doing that. That helps with hosting fees, software, equipment, and the occasional permission fees that help support poets and publishers. I'd like to thank Grant Clauser for graciously giving us permission to include his poem Watching a Flying Squirrel from his recent

Collection Temporary Shelters published in 2025 by Cornerstone Press. And I'd like to thank my delightful husband, Brian P. Kelly, for composing and playing our theme song. Let's read together next time on In Three Poems.