Our conversation this week is with Lee Stockdale - acclaimed poet, Army veteran, and winner of the 2022 United Kingdom National Poetry Prize.

For 10 years, Lee felt a slab on his head - to infinity in every direction - weighing him down. His father, Grant Stockdale, was close friends with John F. Kennedy and, overcome by grief, jumped to his death ten days after the assassination. Due to the shame, stigma, and guilt, he didn't talk about it. But with the help of an extraordinary therapist, a chance enounter with Patti Smith, and cab ride with Jackie Kennedy, Lee felt the weight lift; the loneliness give way to connection. He started doing the things his father did. He finished college, got married, had children, and built a life worth living. And just like his mother, Alice Boyd Stockdale, he started writing poetry to move through the grief and into joy and healing.

In this episode you'll hear Lee talk about that journey to joy and healing, how writing brought him close to his father again, the influence of his mother's poetry on his life, the unsung wonder of Alice Notley, and some other fun stories featuring Bing Crosby, Yoko Ono, and Bob Hope.

Location: Lee's living room in Fairview, NC.

Visit Lee's website

Buy his book of poems Gorilla

Watch and listen to Lee read his award winning poem, 'My Dead Father's General Store in the Middle of a Desert'

Mentioned in this epsiode:

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Quote from Dante: The Divine Comedy

Midway Books in St. Paul, MN

Where the Roots Reach for Water by Jeffery Smith

James Hillman

Wendell Berry

City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC

Grant Stockdale

Can Antioch College Return From the Dead Again?

The Fillmore East

St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery Poetry Project

Patti Smith

Allen Ginsburg

William Burroughs

Gregory Corso

Yoko Ono

CBGB - Bithplace of NYC's Rock, Folk, and Punk Music

Alice Notley

The Village Voice

Robert Wilson

The Talking Heads

the Ramones

Blondie

Are you Jackie Kennedy? by Lee Stockdale

Alice Boyd Stockdale

Humbird Live at Salon Sonics

Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Grant Stockdale in England

The Road to Hong Kong

Jack Paar interview Robert Kennedy in 1964

Brian Lamb

St. Mark's Poetry Project Archive

Alice Notley 101

Alice Notley and the Art of Not Giving a Damn

Ada Limon

White Phosphorus by Alice Notley

Samuel Beckett

Anne Waldman

Mary Oliver

Hannah Kahn

Ladies' Home Journal

Young Man, Strolling by Alice Boyd Stockdale