Episode 179 - Deep Dive with Poet Shuly Cawood

Happy National Poetry Month!

We kick off this episode with Emily reading Lucille Clifton’s poem, “Climbing,” and end with an in-depth conversation with poet Shuly Cawood about her poem, “Starter Marriage.” [The full text of Shuly’s poem is at the end of this description if you’d like to read it before or while listening to the episode.]

Both of us have Writing and Creativity on our minds. Emily started Julia Cameron’s THE ARTIST’S WAY, and Chris is listening to WRITING FOR IMPACT by Bill Birchard. And we have some reading/writing synchronicity going on with Natalie Goldberg. Emily is reading & listening to her classic, WRITING DOWN THE BONES, and when visiting McNally Jackson at Rockefeller Center in NYC Chris picked up WRITING DOWN THE BONES DECK.

More recently read books include WHY AM I SO ANXIOUS by Tracey Marks, MY DEAREST DARLING by Lisa Franco, BOOKSELLING IN AMERICA AND THE WORLD, ed. by Charles B. Anderson. And thanks to listener Colleen’s birthday book club tradition, we revisited a childhood favorite, Judy Blume’s ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET.

There’s another #buddyread on our horizon: TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY IN SEARCH OF AMERICA. We’re reading this for the Vintage Book Club which is sponsored by Book Club on the Go and will meet on Thursday, April 20, 1 pm at the Wood Memorial Library and Museum in South Windsor, CT. All are welcome.

We had a fantastic biblioadventure together in Boston. After spending the day working in Simmons University’s Beatley Library, we visited the amazing independent bookstore, Brookline Booksmith.

Emily is going to be moderating two author sessions at the Newburyport Literary Festival, April 28-30:

— The Other Family Doctor: A Veterinarian Explores What Animals Can Teach Us about Love, Life, and Mortality by Karen Fine, DVM

—Three Roads Back: How Emerson, Thoreau, and William James Responded to the Greatest Losses of Their Lives by Robert D. Richardson with a foreword by Megan Marshall (Emily’s conversation will be with Megan).

Chris is bummed that she won’t be able to attend the Newburyport Literary Festival or either of the two Willa Cather conferences this June. She is, however, planning to attend a series of four virtual events with author Benjamin Taylor that the National Willa Cather Center is offering beginning on April 27th. Taylor’s new book, CHASING BRIGHT MEDUSAS: A LIFE OF WILLA CATHER, is to be published in November.

Visit the episode show notes for more details and links to the books, places, and events listed above.https://www.bookcougars.com/blog-1/2023/episode179

Happy Reading!

Chris & Emily

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Starter Marriage by Shuly Cawood

after Erin Adair-Hodges*

First there was the word and the word was trying.

Trying the apartment with white walls, popcorn ceilings,

footsteps heavy above, thudding over our days.

Trying the job I took filing papers into squeaking cabinets,

the one you took answering phones for dentists. Trying

the brown bag lunches with limp sandwiches

and sliced cheese, the softening apple, the room-temperature

soda. Consuming it all on church steps, hunched below

the overhang as it rained. Trying the cold pool after work

with dead insects needing to be netted. Unraveling towels,

TJ Maxx suits, the walk back on the no-car driveway.

All heat evaporated. Empty stomachs. No one wanted what the other craved.

Trying the red Chevrolet with the bad battery, no parking without pay,

the bus rides to and from work, your stop, my stop, the sun hitting hard,

us squinting at the sky. Your last day, the blue electric toothbrush

they gave you as goodbye. Buzzing in your mouth with all those

trapped words. Trying the new queen mattress

we could not afford but bought anyway.

Trying the laundry we toted to the next

building, plastic hampers in our

arms full of every day’s dirt.

Coffee but no creamer,

bread but no toaster,

sugar hardened in the bag.

Day-old everything bagels,

buy-one, get-one veggie burritos,

dollar theater on Sundays.

New job but less pay, new boss

but no promotion. Saving for tickets

for never vacations.

Trying the places we gave up for each other:

city salted by an ocean, all those fish and ferry rides;

town with three stoplights, two policemen,

a forest to get lost in. Your dreams, my dreams,

weeds by the parking lot. Trying

your face a broken banister,

my hands an unused map.

*The first nine words are borrowed from “Portrait of Mother: 1985” by Erin Adair-Hodges

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