In her Peabody-award winning public radio show and podcast, On Being, Krista Tippett provides a space for deep and meaningful conversations with profound thi. So anyway, I got The Hurting Kind, the galley in the mail from Milkweed. And its true. But I want you to read it second, because what I found in Bright Dead Things, which was a couple of years before that, certainly pre-pandemic, in the before times, was the way you wrote, a way that you spoke of the same story of yourself. And I think its in that category. Limn: Yeah. Starting Thursday, February 2: three months of soaring new On Being conversations, with an eye towards emergence. And so I have. I would say about 50 percent, maybe 60 percent of it was written during the pandemic. Exit And: advance invitations and news on all things On Being, of course. like sustenance, a song where the notes are sung Where some of you were like, Eww, as soon as I said it. And he had a little cage, I would make sure he was And he would get bundled up and carried from house to house. One of the most popular episodes in the history of "On Being," the 15-year-old public-radio program hosted by the honey-voiced Krista Tippett, is a conversation Tippett had more than ten years ago with the late Irish poet and philosopher John O'Donohue on the subject of the inner landscape of beauty. I would say about 50 percent, maybe 60 percent of it was written during the pandemic. I feel like that between space, that liminal space, is a place where we were living for so long, and many of us still living in that between space of, How do I go into the world safely, and how do I move through the world with safety and care-take myself and care-take others. We are fluent in the story of our time marked by catastrophe and dysfunction. Journalist, National Humanities Medalist, and bestselling author Krista Tippett has created a singular space for reflection and conversation in American and global public life. Limn: Yeah. Limn: Not the Saddest Thing in the World, All day I feel some itchiness around And you mentioned that when you wrote this, when was it that you wrote it? Theres this poem which Ive never heard anybody ask you to read called Where the Circles Overlap, . I will trust the world and I will feel at peace. And this time, what came to me as I stood and looked at the trees was that Oh, it isnt just me looking. not forgetting and star bodies and frozen birds, enough of the will to go on and not go on or how, a certain light does a certain thing, enough, of the kneeling and the rising and the looking. writes the word lover in a note and Im strangely, excited for the word lover to come back. Its repeating words. But I want you to read it second, because what I found in. This is not a problem. A special offering from Krista Tippett and all of us at On Being: an incredible, celebratory event listening back and remembering forwards across 20 years of this show in the good company of our beloved friend and former guest, Rev. I cannot reverse it, the record unnoticed, sometimes covered up like sorrow. We understand questions as technologies and virtues as social arts. out. Tippett: And I also just wondered if that experience of loving sound and the cadence of this language that was yours and not yours, if that also flowed into this love of poetry. And then thats also the space for us to sort of walk in as a reader being like, Whats happening here? I think coming back to this idea that poetry is as embodied as it is linguistic. And this is about your childhood, right? Before I bury him, I snap a photo and beg But you said I dont know, I just happened to be I saw you again today. Or, Im suffering, or Right. No, to the rising tides. Tippett: You said a minute ago that the poetry has breath built into it, and you said also that, you have said: its meant to make us breathe. Wisdom Practices and Digital Retreats (Coming in 2023). But then I just examine all the different ways of being quiet. I think thats very true. Limn: Kind of true. Shes written, Science polishes the gift of seeing, Indigenous traditions work with gifts of listening and language. An expert in moss a bryologist she describes mosses as the coral reefs of the forest. Robin Wall Kimmerer opens a sense of wonder and humility for the intelligence in all kinds of life we are used to naming and imagining as inanimate. This is a gift. And that reframing was really important to me. So we have to do this another time. Right now we are in a fast river together every day there are changes that seemed unimaginable until they occurred. adrienne maree brown and others use many words and phrases to describe what she does, and who she is: A student of complexity. on all sides with want. I guess maybe you had to quit doing that since you had this new job. So I think thats where, for me, I found any sort of sense of spirituality or belonging. Perhaps, has an unsung third stanza, something brutal, snaking underneath us as we absentmindly sing, the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands, hoping our team wins. Its a prose poem. A special offering from Krista Tippett and all of us at On Being: an incredible, celebratory event listening back and remembering forwards across 20 years of this show in the good company of our beloved friend and former guest, Rev. And poetry is absolutely this is not something I knew would happen when I started this but poetry now is at the heart of. of the mother and the child and the father and the child I have people who ask me, How do you write poems? And you talk about process. And I always thought it was just because I had to work. Tippett: Ada Limn is the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States. I think there were these moments that that quietness, that aloneness, that solitude, that as hard as they were, I think hopefully weve learned some lessons from that. What, she asks, if we get this right? Funny thing about grief, its hold In a political and cultural space that rewards certainty, ferments argument, and hastens closure, we nourish and resource the interplay between inner life, outer life, and life together. Look, we are not unspectacular things. cigarette smoke or expertise in recipes or In fact, my mother is and was an atheist. but witnessed. Easy light storms in through the window, soft, edges of the world, smudged by mist, a squirrels, nest rigged high in the maple. whats larger within us, toward how we were born. like something almost worth living for. Its so interesting because I feel like one of the things as you age, as an artist, as a human being, you start to rethink the stories that people have told you and start to wonder what was useful and what was not useful. We know joy to be a life-giving, resilience-making human birthright. And this poem was basically a list of all the poems I didnt think I could write, because it was the early days of the pandemic, and I kept thinking, just that poetry had kind of given up on me, I guess. And here was something that was so well crafted and people to this day will say its one of the most expert villanelles ever written its so well crafted, and yet it doesnt actually offer any answers. So I think there was a lot of, not only was it music, but then it was music in Spanish. I feel like I could hear that response, right? My familys all in California. What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said. I feel like theres so many elements to that discovery. Krista Tippett is a Peabody-award winning broadcaster, National Humanities Medalist, and New York Times bestselling author. Replenishment and invigoration in your inbox. Then in 2018, she published a brilliant essay called "Complicating the Narratives," which she opened by confessing a professional existential crisis. And I feel like its very interesting when you actually have to get away from it, because you can also do the other thing where you focus too much on the breath. podcast, this great poetry podcast for a while and. Tippett: So I feel like the last one Id like for you to read for us is A New National Anthem, which you read at your inauguration as Poet Laureate. the drama, and the acquaintances suicide, the long-lost and enough of the pointing to the world, weary The On Being Project is located on Dakota land. and the one that is so relieved to finally be home. And I feel like the thing that always kept coming back to me, especially in the early days was, What does it do? Well right now it anchors you to the world again and again and again. Limn: I remember writing this poem because I really love the word lover, and its a kind of polarizing word. And that there was this break when we moved from pictographic language, which is characters which directly refer to the things spoken, and when we moved to the phonetic alphabet. But each of us has callings, not merely to be professionals, but to be friends, neighbors, colleagues, family, citizens, lovers of the world. The listener wants to understand the humanity behind the words of the other, and patiently summons one's own best self and one's own best words and questions.". Once it has been witnessed We touch each other. So I think were going to just have a lot of poetry tonight. Theres how I dont answer the phone, and how I sometimes like to lie down on the floor in the kitchen and pretend Im not home when people knock. This poem is featured in Ada's On Being conversation with Krista, "To Be Made Whole.". And then I would say in terms of the sacred, it was always the natural world. Yet her lifelong struggle with Crohns Disease and her pioneering work with cancer patients shaped her view of life. Yeah, I was convinced. And that was in shorter supply than one would think. In the modern western world, vocation was equated with work. And I knew immediately that it was a love poem and a loss poem. The Fetzer Institute, supporting a movement of organizations applying spiritual solutions to societys toughest problems. Limn: Yeah. Just back to this idea that there is this organic automatically breathing thing of which were part, and that we even have to rediscover that. And its always an interesting question because I feel like my process changes and I change. This means that I am in a reciprocal relationship with the natural world, not that it is my job to be the poet that goes and says, Tree, I will describe it to you.. lover, come back to the five-and-dime. like the flag, how it undulates in the wind The science of awe. creeks, two highways, two stepparents Wilkerson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, has become a leading figure in narrative nonfiction with The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste. Yet what Amanda has gone on to investigate and so, so helpfully illuminate is not just about journalism, or about politics. 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