Episode 121: The Tie Breakers Episode
b'In this episode we discussed three very different poems by Oregon poet Lorna Rose, all three resulting in juicy conversation and resulting in three tie-breakers (none of them involving the same voting configurations amongst our team!). This was a big first for us. The episode was kicked off by a larger discussion (prompted by the first poem) around aspects of cultural appropriation and touched on facets of trauma and language. This wide-ranging discussion and the split in our voting pointed to the power and ambiguity of various elements in these poems.\\xa0 In the end, a tie-breaking editor helped deliver two of these poems into PBQ\\u2019s pages! Have a listen!\\xa0\\nNote: This episode was recorded in December 2021, so there will be a bit of time travel involved.\\xa0\\nThis episode is brought to you by our sponsor Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song \\u201cSpaghetti with Loretta\\u201d now opens our show.\\u202f\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nAt the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Jason Schneiderman, Alex Tunney\\xa0\\nAbsentee voter for the tie-breakers: Samanatha Neugebauer\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nLinks to things we discuss you might like to check out:\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n"Declaration" by Tracy K. Smith, an erasure poem of the Declaration of Independence\\xa0\\nhttps://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147468/declaration-5b5a286052461\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n"Native Son" by Richard Wright\\xa0\\nhttps://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1992/07/20/the-hammer-and-the-nail\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n"Appropriate: A Provocation" by Paisley Rekdal\\xa0\\nhttps://wwnorton.com/books/9781324003588\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n"How-To" by Anders Carlson Wee and retraction by The Nation\\xa0\\nhttps://www.thenation.com/article/archive/how-to/\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n"Inside Kate Winlset\'s Mare of Easttown" Pennsylvania Accent, Vanity Fair\\xa0\\nhttps://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/04/kate-winslet-mare-of-easttown-accent\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nLorna is a Pacific Northwest writer and speaker. Her narrative nonfiction and poetry have been recognized by Pacific Northwest Writers Association and the Oregon Poetry Association, and have appeared or are forthcoming in Scary Mommy, Jellyfish Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Writers Resist, and elsewhere. She\'s also a\\u202fspeaker and workshop leader. When not wrangling her two small children, she fantasizes about being interviewed on NPR\\u2019s Fresh Air.\\u202f\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nAuthor website\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nLeaving Libya\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nI flood my lungs\\u202f\\xa0\\nwith the wet stench of fish and bodies and fuel.\\xa0\\xa0\\nDinghy motor whines against the night.\\u202f\\xa0\\n\\u202f\\xa0\\nSalt air grinds my skin \\u2018til it\\u2019s threadbare and\\xa0\\xa0\\nthere\\u2019s no sitting since leaving Sabratha.\\xa0\\xa0\\nBody clenches tight to its bones\\u202f\\xa0\\n\\u202f\\xa0\\nand shrill muscles shriek and weep and lock up.\\xa0\\xa0\\nDamp t-shirt clings to goosebumped flesh under a\\xa0\\xa0\\ntattered orange life jacket. But what life?\\u202f\\xa0\\n\\u202f\\xa0\\nNext to me a shaking woman holds her boney baby\\xa0\\xa0\\nand cries. She has shit herself.\\u202f\\xa0\\nBehind me a man mumbles and mumbles for water.\\u202f\\xa0\\n\\u202f\\xa0\\nHis eyes roll hollow,\\u202f\\xa0\\nmouth slacks open.\\u202f\\xa0\\nFrom his breath\\u202f\\xa0\\n\\u202f\\xa0\\nI smell the thick stink of rot,\\u202f\\xa0\\nthe gray smell of\\u202f\\xa0\\nforgotten humanity.\\u202f\\xa0\\n\\u202f\\xa0\\nLights of the Italian coastline appear and\\xa0\\xa0\\nmy heart races,\\u202f\\xa0\\nvision blurs.\\xa0\\nFrom somewhere behind there\\u2019s a jolt.\\xa0\\xa0\\nYelling.\\u202f\\xa0\\nFloor tilts.\\u202f\\xa0\\n\\u202f\\xa0\\nAnd the lights of Lampedusa go black.\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nSurviving the Rush\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nNo music plays in\\u202f\\xa0\\nthe general store in Circle, Alaska,\\xa0\\xa0\\nwhich is full of mukluks and\\u202f\\xa0\\n\\u202f\\xa0\\nWonder Bread.\\u202f\\xa0\\n\\u202f\\xa0\\nVillagers fish the Yukon,\\u202f\\xa0\\nmemorize river rise,\\u202f\\xa0\\nbet on\\u202f\\xa0\\n\\u202f\\xa0\\nbreakup.\\u202f\\xa0\\n\\u202f\\xa0\\nLong ago miners arrived from Outside\\xa0\\nto sift, chip\\u202f\\xa0\\nrip fortunes\\xa0\\n\\u202f\\xa0\\nfrom earth.\\u202f\\xa0\\n\\u202f\\xa0\\nStilts were drilled into permafrost and\\xa0\\xa0\\nstructures were imposed and\\u202f\\xa0\\nall bustle and\\u202f\\xa0\\n\\u202f\\xa0\\nrage.\\u202f\\xa0\\n\\u202f\\xa0\\nThen claims fell dry and\\u202f\\xa0\\nno patience and Circle started to\\xa0\\n\\u202f\\xa0\\nwither.\\xa0\\n\\u202f\\xa0\\nThe locals\\u202f\\xa0\\npicked up pieces of buildings, tried to\\u202f\\xa0\\nheal the\\u202f\\xa0\\n\\u202f\\xa0\\npock-marked ground.\\u202f\\xa0\\n\\u202f\\xa0\\nToday a tourist\\u2019s crisp dollar might\\u202f\\xa0\\nmean something,\\u202f\\xa0\\nexcept the locals would have to tolerate\\u202f\\xa0\\n\\u202f\\xa0\\nthe perfumey tourist.\\u202f\\xa0\\n\\u202f\\xa0\\nVillagers fish the Yukon,\\u202f\\xa0\\nmemorize river rise,\\u202f\\xa0\\nbet on breakup. The soil smells of\\u202f\\xa0\\n\\u202f\\xa0\\nfool\\u2019s gold and blood.'