Ronald Kessler | In the President’s Secret Service

October 25, 2009 | Comments Off

 
icon for podpress  Interview with Ronald Kessler [19:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

From his website:

Ronald Kessler is the New York Times bestselling author of eighteen non-fiction books. Kessler began his career as a journalist in 1964 on the Worcester Telegram, followed by three years as an investigative reporter and editorial writer with the Boston Herald. In 1968, he joined the Wall Street Journal as a reporter in the New York bureau. He became an investigative reporter with the Washington Post in 1970 and continued as a staff writer until 1985.

Secret Service agents act as human surveillance cameras and observe everything that goes on behind the scenes in the president’s inner circle. Kessler’s latest book, ‘In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes With Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect,’ reveals what they have seen, providing startling inside stories about presidents from John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, as well as about their vice presidents, families, Cabinet officers, and White House aides.

Posted by jamie | Filed Under History, Politics, Entertainment, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

Thomas Childers | Soldier from the War Returning

October 24, 2009 | Comments Off

Dr. Kent: Hello everyone. Welcome to Sound Authors. I’ve got four fantastic guests on the show today. We’re back to an older format of Sound Authors, just for this show, and then we’ll be back to the brand new format with a great show next week. I’ve got four guests on the show today. My first guest will be Thomas Childers, an award-winning professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. His newest book is called, ‘Soldier from the War Returning.’ After that, I’ll be talking to the New York Times bestselling author, Ronald Kessler, about his newest book called, ‘In the President’s Secret Service.’ After that will be the children’s author of ‘The Curious Garden,’ Peter Brown. At the end of the show will be Chris Smither, an incredible folk musician who just put out his eleventh studio album. He’s had a nearly forty year career. It’s my pleasure to welcome the author of an incredible book called, ‘Soldier from the War Returning.’ It’s about the troubled homecoming from World War II. Welcome to the show, Thomas Childers.

Thomas Childers: Thank you. My pleasure.

Dr. Kent: Tell me about this book. It’s about a soldier from the war returning, just like the title says. Tell me about it.

Thomas Childers: Well, I think we’re all familiar with Tom’s Brokaw’s book ‘The Greatest Generation,’ and this is a greatest generation storyline of the generation of men who went off, fought the wraith of the great depression, went off, fought the Second World War, prevailed in it, and then came home healthy, happy, well-adjusted, worked hard, had families, and went on. Those stories have been told over and over again. They’re inspiring; they’ve been told in volume. But I wondered what happened to those veterans whose reentry was troubled: those long-ignored, and then their families, who found readjustment from the war a disruptive, enriching experience, much like those from Vietnam, and the current wars that we’re enduring. I was born just after the Second World War, in that first wave of baby boomers. I grew up in a small town outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee. One of the most common things that one can hear about men in the late ’40s, early ’50s, my mother would say, ‘He was never the same after the war.’ So I wondered if the experiences that I’d had growing up and seeing my parents, who had a very difficult time, if the parents of friends of mine, was somehow peculiar to my experience, or whether it was something more broad based. So I set out to find out, and discovered that in fact, the happy greatest generation storyline - it’s not that it’s so wrong, but it certainly doesn’t cover what was really a very traumatic reentry for so many veterans.

Dr. Kent: How does this differ from the books you’ve done before?

Thomas Childers: Well, I’ve written two other books about the Second World War. It’s the third in a trilogy, really. One was called, ‘Wings of Morning’ - the last American bomber shot down over Germany in World War II was about my maternal uncle who was killed on what was the last American bomber that was shot down over Germany in the Second World War - where the family had gotten a killed-in-action telegram on VE Day, so that while others were celebrating the end of the war, this family was plunged into real tragedy. I wanted to write about that, about the loss suffered by this family, and what it was like for these young men in their very early 20s who were flying dangerous missions over Germany in the Second World War. What I’ve then done in this book and the other two, is I’ve tried to write things that are historically accurate, but I’ve written them in a novelistic way, so that what I really wanted to do was to the capture the feelings and the experiences of people rather than the kind of dry historical rendering.

Dr. Kent: It’s a fascinating tale. You go into things in this book that again aren’t what we think of. Of course we think of Vietnam: we see Vietnam vets on the street. We know the story that they came home and it wasn’t a happy homecoming. We know even now the Iraq war vets, a lot of them have nerve damage, there’s hundreds of thousands of folks that have been injured in some way. Marriages dissolved, and all of this. So that happened too after the Second World War. What kind of things did you uncover?

Thomas Childers: It certainly did. First of all, we think of PTSD, which is written about a great deal about Vietnam vets, and the current wars. At the end of the Second World War, over in 1947, two years after the war had ended, over half the beds in veteran administration hospitals were occupied by men suffering from what they called neuropsychiatric disorders, we would say some form of PTSD. Forty percent of the army discharges during the war had been for psychiatric reasons. There were almost a million and a half troops hospitalized at some point during the war for what they called neuropsychiatric disorders. This was written about and talked about a great deal during the end of the war: men coming back, suffering from nightmares, alcohol abuse, shattered personal relationships. For example, in 1946 and in 1947, the United States went through a post-war divorce boom: the highest divorce rates in American history were in 1946 and 1947. We’ve topped them now, but it took until 1973 to do it. If you read through any of the things: books, ‘Life’ magazine, ‘Colliers’ and so on, divorce is talked about over and over and over again. One judge in Newark, New Jersey wanted - it was so common, that he was so furious at wives of service men, who were getting divorces, adultery being the charge - that he wanted to have their heads shaved, and then be branded with the scarlet letter. Didn’t happen.

Dr. Kent: Where do you find your documents? There’s so much material, I’m sure. You certainly culled through a lot of materials, but where did you find the most valuable material for this book?

Thomas Childers: The kind of thing I was just talking to you about, the numbers: psychiatric cases, the number of divorces, those were written up in ‘Time’ magazine and ‘Newsweek.’ You can follow them also in government statistical records. There are a lot of oral histories one can consult, but I did a lot of interviewing, all over the country: from California to Maine. Asking, talking to people, actually mostly many veterans of course, and now, unfortunately, widows of veterans, that generation passing away with great rapidity, and also people my age, that is now the grown children of veterans of the Second World War. What I discovered was that so many people had grown up in broken homes, had had fathers who had suffered from alcohol abuse, and so on, estranged parents and so on, and they were finally happy that they weren’t alone, that this has been the sort of great silent story of the aftermath of the Second World War. I have to say that one of the things about these oral histories is that you may be able to get veterans to talk about their combat experiences, but that’s not easy. It’s much more difficult to say, ‘Excuse me, but during the war, did you have an adulterous relationship? Did you drink too much when you came home? Did you abuse your wife and kids? Did you have nightmares? Were you ever treated for psychiatric problems?’ So it really takes pushing beyond this. One of the things that I did in the book is to write about my family, which had its great difficulties, the family of my best friend, whose father lost both legs in December of 1944, and had a very stormy relationship with his family when he came back. Then another man, a doctor, a very distinguished physician, a brilliant man, who was diagnosed in his 70s with a chronic case of post-traumatic stress disorder, which had led to divorce and estrangement from his children.

Dr. Kent: What is it like putting your own story into this book? Obviously it colors it in a different way.

Thomas Childers: It was a harrowing experience, and my parents are no longer alive. I’m not sure what they have thought about it, except that it’s true. It’s very, very difficult to do, and it was very courageous of the other people that I interviewed, the Alums, my best friend’s family, Michael Gould in Rhode Island, to be able to talk about very difficult personal experiences. But what it does do is to make those stories come alive, so that you’re not just dealing with divorce statistics, and statistics on psychiatric troubles.

Dr. Kent: Right. So what’s your take on this, the greatest generation? Obviously it’s in your subtitle to the book, it’s something that a lot of people think about, and it was a fantastic victory in some ways. Obviously these men were liberators, these men were heroes, whereas in Vietnam, it wasn’t the same situation. What did that stigma of the greatest generation, or of hero, or whatever, how did that affect this whole soldier from the war returning?

Thomas Childers: I think that nothing that I found in any way, it seems to me, diminishes the wartime generation’s accomplishments: they deserve all the testimonials and public tributes they get. But, what it does suggest is that the price they paid was far higher, the toll extracted from them and their families far greater, and their struggles far more protracted than the glossy tributes that we find in Tom Brokaw’s ‘The Greatest Generation’ would lead us to believe.

Dr. Kent: And you are a professor of history. When you’re teaching history to today’s young generation, how do you teach World War II history? How do you teach modern history to college students?

Thomas Childers: Well, the Second World War for college students now might as well be the 30-Year’s War from the 17th century. They’ve certainly seen movies; some of them watch the History Channel, even. But that generation of men and women that experienced the war is quickly passing away, and so what I try to do is to certainly deal with the major events of the war, give this great forward history, but also to bring as much of the experience, the emotional content of the war, what it was like for so-called ordinary men and women in the United States, or in Britain, or Russia, or Germany, or Japan. What it was like for them, and how they experienced what was the greatest, and by ‘greatest,’ I mean the most extensive conflict, in human history.

Dr. Kent: Well, it’s been such an honor chatting with you. The book is out on Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and of course I’ve been speaking to Thomas Childers, author of ‘Soldier from the War Returning.’ It’s a powerful testimony to the suffering of soldiers no matter what the conflict is. We might think that these folks didn’t go through the same thing that the soldiers are going through these days, but it seems to be the case.

Thomas Childers: Yes, absolutely.

Dr. Kent: And where can we find out more about you and about the book?

Thomas Childers: The Houghton Mifflin website, that certainly has information about the book and the University of Pennsylvania website has things about me and the books that I’ve written.

Dr. Kent: And students that are lucky enough to take your courses, what are you teaching now?

Thomas Childers: I teach a course called the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and then a course on the Second World War in film and fiction.

Dr. Kent: Well, a lot of us would love to be a fly on the wall in your classroom. Thank you so much for chatting with me today, and I hope to hear about the next one.

Thomas Childers: Well, thank you very much for having me.

Posted by jamie | Filed Under TRANSCRIPTS, History, Politics, Entertainment, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

Thomas Childers | Soldier from the War Returning

October 24, 2009 | Comments Off

 
icon for podpress  Interview with Thomas Childers [14:57m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

From his website:

Thomas Childers was born and raised in East Tennessee. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Tennessee, and earned his Ph.D. in History from Harvard University in 1976.

Since 1976, Professor Childers has taught in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards. In addition to teaching at University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Childers has held visiting professorships at Trinity Hall College, Cambridge, Smith College, and Swarthmore College, and he has lectured in London, Oxford, Berlin, Munich, and other universities in the United States and Europe.

Professor Childers is the author and editor of several books on modern German history and the Second World War. These include ‘The Nazi Voter’ (Chapel Hill, 1983), ‘The Formation of the Nazi Constituency,’ (London, 1987) and ‘Reevaluating the Third Reich: New Controversies, New Interpretations’ (New York, 1993). ‘Wings of Morning: The Story of the Last American Bomber Shot Down Over Germany in World War II’ (Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley, 1995), was praised by Jonathan Yardley in ‘The Washington Post’ as “a powerful and unselfconsciously beautiful book.” ‘We’ll Meet Again’ (New York: Henry Holt and Company) was published in 1999 and is set in wartime Germany, France, Britain and the United States. ‘Soldier from the War Returning,’ examines the difficulties of veterans returning home from the Second World War.

Posted by jamie | Filed Under History, Politics, Entertainment, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

Michelle Karen | Astrology for Enlightenment

October 7, 2009 | Comments Off

Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors. Well, this is Dr. Kent, and it’s my pleasure to speak to the author of Astrology for Enlightenment. It’s a beautiful book, and her name is Michelle Karen. Welcome to the show.

Michelle Karen: Thank you.

Dr. Kent: And it’s really a beautiful book, on the outside and on the inside. Tell me a nutshell of what this book is all about.

Michelle Karen: Well, it’s a very original book in that it’s an astrology book but it’s way more than that. It’s really a book on enlightenment. On the Mayan calendar what is happening between now and 2012, which is the end of the Mayan calendar, why does the Mayan calendar end on the 21st of December, 2012, what this means to us, and I share very classical insights on how to reach enlightenment in our daily life, in our bedroom and our bathroom and our kitchen, etc. And I also offer excerpts from the prophecy of John of Jerusalem, that was origined 500 years before Nostradamus seen centuries, and which is a very clear prophecy for our time that is absolutely predicting what is going on in our lives right now, and all the drama (inaudible) that we’re exposed to that is the prophecy that’s full of hope, and that’s giving away that this world of darkness that we are exposed to now is actually giving way to a beautiful time of magic and peace and harmony. And I also redefine each sign in a holistic way, so based on the law of similarities, I explain how to understand each sign by referring to the colors, the sounds, the animals, the plants, the cities they are connected to, and I also give a very detailed prediction for each sign between now and 2012 and how to write those changes as elegantly as possible. So it’s basically a memoir. It’s a very handsome kind of book that is going to really help you understand what is going on, why there’s changes, and how to deal with them as positively and effectively as possible.

Dr. Kent: Well I know a little bit about astrology but not too much. Kind of the extent of what I know is, I heard a great lecture on, you know, the three wise men and the Christian bible, and they were three astrologers, so I know a little bit about that. And then also, of course, the horoscope that comes in the newspaper every week. What do you think people don’t know about astrology?

Michelle Karen: Well, I think, well first of all I think you’re way ahead than most people because the fact that you know that those guys were actually soldiers and they followed the star that told them that there was going to be a very special birth on the planet, which was Christ, it’s already way ahead of the game already. I would say that astrology to me is really a tool for empowerment. Because more, it’s totally based on your date of birth and month, day and year, your time of birth and your place of birth in terms of city, state and/or country. It’s going to give a map of the heavens at the time you were born, what you breathed in with your first breath. So that is very much, there is a sense there of something that gives us a tool that enables us to really understand what our weakness is and our strengths, and what did we choose when we walk on this planet or when we in come in groups. And out of that we can direct our lives with more focus, much faster, it’s basically like having a map, you know, and it’s like if you were invited somewhere and you just drove around randomly hoping to get to your destination, you’re probably going to spend a lot of time just scattered around, and getting frustrated and not figuring out where it is that you’re supposed to go and never finding that place. Whereas if you get your GPS and it tells you to go right, to go left, to make a turn, that maybe here there’s a nice museum to look at, or here there’s a nice viewpoint, or here there’s a great restaurant, well you’re going on a much more enjoyable ride and finding much more efficient and you’re definitely going to get to your destination much faster and in much better condition. And that’s basically what having a birth chart is about. Finding the fastest and the most efficient and the most empowering way to become all that you are.

Dr. Kent: And so, you know, I’m a Sagittarius, and people purport to know a lot about me just by knowing my birthday. What does birth date have to do with all of this?

Michelle Karen: Well, the birthday is based on, you know, because (inaudible) priests who wear the ancient astrologers and festive astrologers in Caldea which is present day Iraq, they figure things out by just observing what was going on in the sky and what was going on on earth, and they started to see that there were a lot of similarities between certain configurations and certain times of the year and that people born during that specific time of the year displayed very similar character traits. So Sagittarius in our northern hemisphere is December, and this is the time of the year where usually the trees are barren and it’s cold, but there is still some very beautiful days and there is a hope that the despite all this coldness that we’ll feel great. So this is the time of Christmas, this is the time of Hanukah and all those holidays where we should give to our family and eat together and we have gratitude for life. And this is, and this could be the hardest days you have dealing with this specific time of the year connected to a specific sign reveal what that sign is about. So if you look at Hanukah or Christmas, these are really beautiful holidays of sharing and gratitude, and that’s the basic character of Sagittarius. Sagittarius is a fierce line, so it’s a very dynamic, energetic, full of faith kind of sign. Very philosophical, also very interested in foreign languages and foreign cultures and long distance traveling, and definitely people. And it’s represented by the centaur, you know with the arrow, you know when you have an arrow it’s usually shot and lands much further than where it was shot from, and usually Sagittarians are people who are able to see the silver lining on every dark cloud and who are very adventurous, who are usually quite athletic, and who really take great pride in having a very fit body, and who are extremely intelligent and usually have an encyclopedic knowledge and a great friend who can usually know, you know, connect very easily to people and have this warmth and this very shiny intelligence that embraces everything. So they’re not always very good with details, because they’re always focusing on the great picture. But they’re very dynamic and hopeful leaders in a religious or philosophical way. And they’re very honest people, you can always know the truth from a Sagittarius, they will never lie to you, or if they lie it’s really very obvious.

Dr. Kent: It’s such a fascinating thing. Now, is there a bad sign? You know, if you were born in March did you get hit with the unlucky stick? Or are all signs good in their own ways?

Michelle Karen: Every sign is good in its own way. And sometimes the Sagittarius is going to be easier for you to connect with an Aries or Leo who are other fire signs, than it might be to a Pisces who is born in March who is more sensitive, more imaginative, more inner mystical, meditative, very concerned with music, or who loves peace and solitary and who could be a little more secretive. So it doesn’t, so there is different qualities specific to different signs, and each of these qualities create the tapestry of life so they each have a very important role. It’s as if we had this society that only has accountants, where probably our finances would definitely be in order, but nobody would eat. We need a baker, we need a school, we need teachers, we need accountants, we need all sorts of artists, we need all sorts of people with different skills and gifts that are going to enrich our experience of life.

Dr. Kent: So your book Astrology for Enlightenment, you mentioned it’s sort of like a guide or an encyclopedia. Tell us about, how does one read the book?

Michelle Karen: Well for example, there’s a lot of ways to read the book, but there is one very unique feature to this book, which is on the last page, and which is a guide to the planetary rulership of every hour of every day. So the nice thing is that you don’t need to look into and count zones, time zones or summer time or wintertime. It’s going to be just the time that’s on your clock, and you’re going to look, for example, if you want to create successful meetings and you should always, and I explain how to use it with the meaning of every planet, but you should always use the sun hour. And the sun hour happens, each planetary hour happens four times every day of every week. So for example, if you want to start a fitness hour, well the Mars hour would be the right one. If you want to have a successful date or you want to create harmony with someone with whom there’s been discord, then you would use the Venus hour. And then you can also look at, for example, when somebody calls you and emails you, and check at what time they called you or they emailed you, and that’s going to give you a sense of their hidden agenda or what their real purpose was in contacting you. So that’s one way of looking at it. Another way to use the book is to use the prediction for the next four years and I did it sign by sign, and I created a (inaudible). So for example, as a Sagittarius if you want to know what’s going, what are going to be the major dates or shifts in your love life, for example, your career, then you would go to that specific segment of the book. And then I also used that, you know we usually, you’re Sagittarius so you go and read Sagittarius. But I explain in my book that we are the 12 signs. So as you read Sagittarius, well you might also want to read Capricorn if you’re interested in your finances, or enhancing your finances. And Capricorn, and I explain exactly on the grid on which sign corresponds to what are of life for every single sign. And for example, if you start to use a tool for enlightenment of each sign, for example the colors and the gemstones and the scents and the perfumes and the plants, as we see with the Capricorn, you start creating something in your life that’s going to help you enhance or empower the area of finances. So it’s a very complete book, and then I give also predictions based on the Mayan calendar, and based on or in relation to with our Western astrology, which I believe brings much deeper depth to what the Mayan calendar talks about and the various stages and cycles we are in between now and 2012. So it’s really a book that you can have fun with. It’s a book that you can go back and forth with, it’s a book that you can use in all sorts of ways. So that’s why it’s sort of a manual you want to have with you at all times, because I know some friends who have bought like four different copies of Astrology for Enlightenment for each member of their family. Because there’s always someone who is using the book and (inaudible) very different ways. So it’s one of those books that you know, you don’t necessarily read from cover to cover. You can, of course, and reading for first read it will help, but after that you’re just going to go back and forth and flip through the pages.

Dr. Kent: Well, it’s been such an honor chatting with Michelle Karen. Her book is called Astrology for Enlightenment. Again, it’s a gorgeous book, it’s something you definitely could leave sitting around the house and be proud when people see it. It’s a beautiful looking book. And it’s been such a pleasure to talk to you.

Michelle Karen: Thank you very much, and people can also order it on my website if they want, and I’ll sign every copy personally. And it’s michellekaren.com.

Dr. Kent: So michellekaren.com, and the book again is Astrology for Enlightenment, and it was a real pleasure talking to you.

Michelle Karen: Thank you very much.

Posted by jamie | Filed Under TRANSCRIPTS, Medicine, Spirituality, Entertainment, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

Billy Collins | Ballistics

October 6, 2009 | Comments Off

Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors. Today is a great day on this show. My next guest is a wonderful poet, one of the best in history, in my opinion. His newest book is called Ballistics, it came out on Random House. Wonderful book, and features one of the best poems in my little collection that I keep at my home, which shows a picture of a bullet going through a book, which I love. Welcome to the show, Billy Collins.

Billy Collins: Thank you for having me on.

Dr. Kent: And tell me a little about this collection Ballistics.

Billy Collins: Well, it just came out last year, so it’s in terms of poetry production it’s still very new. You don’t have to get out an article every day like sports writers do. I don’t know, it’s as you said, it doesn’t really have, well it has the two usual themes. The themes of all my poetry are me and death. Those are basically the two threads that run through it. I don’t really have a vision of a book and then write thematic books, except for those two rather important themes. So I just write one poem at a time, basically, and when it comes time to, when I think I have enough poems that may constitute a book, I start putting them together in a pile and seeing what it looks like. And then there’s some organization work. But I sort of figure that because I’m writing each poem there’ll be some kind of thematic connection between it all.

Dr. Kent: Well I’d love to start out by, one of the things I’ve wanted to ask you is, you were the poet laureate under one of the least loved Presidents. What, do you have anything to do with the administration when you are poet laureate? What does that role entail? Was it surprising to you?

Billy Collins: Well I want to first of all take issue with the preposition “under.” A poet laureate does not serve under the White House. The poet laureate, in fact, has an office on top of the Library of Congress. So there’s no connection between the office of the poet laureate and the current, or any administration.

Dr. Kent: Thank goodness.

Billy Collins: Yeah, the poet laureate is appointed by the Librarian of Congress, that’s James Billington, and you’re basically an employee of the Library of Congress, and that’s where your office is, and that’s where you work out of. It’s as separate as the Bureau of Engraving, probably, from the White House. And did it come as a surprise? Yes it did. It was a complete and total wrecking ball from outer space because it’s one of those things I never even actually dreamed of. I never even fantasized about it. It seemed completely kind of much too dignified for the likes of me. And when I finally got to my office in Washington, which is gorgeous, it has a balcony and a view of the Capitol, and it’s quite, very well appointed, hanging on the walls are photographs of previous poets laureate. And when I sat down at my desk they all seemed to be looking down and saying, “What are you doing here? There must be some mistake. Please get security.” So I felt pretty undeserving of the role. At least in the beginning. I kind of grew into it.

Dr. Kent: And it was a difficult time to come into that role, of course, in 2001, where the country wasn’t really keen on comedy or arts, like poetry. What did it feel like in that role in 2001?

Billy Collins: Well I felt like I didn’t want to be in that role. One of the things that happened, I was appointed in June or July of that year, and so 911 happened a few months later. And at that point, for quite a while I was, I thought I was going to be interviewed to death. Because everyone wanted, for some reason, wanted the poet laureate to not just comment, but sort of provide some kind of consolation, or point people toward some poems that would be appropriate to read at this time, due to the fact that no other art form, I don’t think, was looked to for that kind of remedying, or that kind of solace. You know, ballet starts got called up and said what should we do about 911, or movie directors even. So it was interesting that poetry is something that people do indeed turn to in times of crisis, like that’s why they read them at wedding receptions.

Dr. Kent: Right, exactly. (laughter)

Billy Collins: Or funerals, I meant to say.

Dr. Kent: And funerals, yeah. The two most horrible times in a person’s life, right?

Billy Collins: Well, it’s an instability. No one’s ready to get married, and no one’s ready to die, usually. In periods of great dis-equilibrium, poetry particularly with its steady cadence and its use of rhyme has a way of stabilizing things. And because it can be recited over and over again it has a way of ritualizing and calming things down, I think, even regardless of its content.

Dr. Kent: And of all of the poet laureates staring down at you, I mean, the list is incredible, from William Stafford to Stanley Kunitz. What did you, did you go back and page through some of their poetry from their years in the service of the country?

Billy Collins: Well I’d already read their works, I didn’t really consciously go back and see what they produced as laureates. In fact, I had the feeling that if they, if the laureateship affected their production or output as it affected mine, there’d actually be very little to read because one is so distracted by publications and interviews and doing things for the media that one hardly has time to write. In fact I began to suspect that it was some kind of government plot that the government really would single out a poet who seemed to be doing very well and living a happy and productive artistic life, and then make that person poet laureate and thereby bring an end to their writing. So I thought it was probably a way of, it’s a very subtle form of censorship.

Dr. Kent: That’s really funny. And that kind of brings up another thing that comes to my mind, you know, people talk about you as one of the successful poets, which is sort of a contradiction in terms for most poets. What’s it like to be, I guess, leading a world of underappreciated artists?

Billy Collins: Well, I guess when I think about it, it makes me uncomfortable. I just try not to think about it very much. I don’t know, I mean, I think something did happen to my writing. I did, there’s no denying that I’ve acquired a kind of unusually broad readership, and I’m always grateful for that. How it happened, I’m not really sure. I think the poems are okay, but you have to have something else beside that, and I think National Public Radio was an enormous boost for me because if your poem is on National Public Radio, you’re reading to an audience of two to four million people, which is a lot of church basement readings thrown together.

Dr. Kent: Absolutely. Well, you’re also a big favorite of Garrison Keillor’s, and what, last year or the year before, I think it was the year before, we saw you at Town Hall reading some poetry.

Billy Collins: Well he’s been very good to me and very good for poetry itself, I think. His taste does not always overlap mine, but no one’s does. But the Writer’s Almanac presents a poem a day, and he has had poets on his Program Companion, and he’s an anthologizer of two volumes of poetry at least, collections, and he’s just put out a book of his own sonnets. So he is a self-described English major for life, and he’s been, of all those kind of wasteful hours that you can hear on the radio, just people playing records and talking right wing politics, Garrison Keillor uses radio at its highest level. You know, lives, entertainment, and particularly with his interesting poetry. I think he does a great service for the art.

Dr. Kent: Well I’d love to have you read a poem, if you’re willing. Do you have any form the newest collection Ballistics that you might want to read to us?

Billy Collins: Sure, I’d be happy to. Let me read a poem called Adage, which is a poem that plays around with sayings and axioms and that kind of thing, proverbs.

Adage

When it’s late at night and branches 
are banging against the windows, 
you might think that love is just a matter
of leaping out of the frying pan of yourself 
into the fire of someone else, 
but it’s a little more complicated than that.
It’s more like trading the two birds
 who might be hiding in that bush 
for the one you are not holding in your hand.
A wise man once said that love 
was like forcing a horse to drink 
but then everyone stopped thinking of him as wise.
Let us be clear about something. Love is not as simple as getting up on the wrong side of the bed wearing the emperor’s clothes.
No, it’s more like the way the pen feels after it has defeated the sword. It’s a little like the penny saved or the nine dropped stitches.
You look at me through the halo of the last candle and tell me that love is an ill wind that has no turning, a road that blows no good,
but I am here to remind you, as our shadows tremble on the walls, that love is the early bird who is better late than never.

Dr. Kent: A beautiful poem from Ballistics, which came out on Random House. Of course, we’re talking to Billy Collins. What a great poem. Your poetry has such a, I don’t want to say it’s developed a new school in poets, but it kind of is a real inspiration for young poets because you use an element of comedy that is in my opinion really masterful. How do you blend, maybe you don’t do it consciously, but how does comedy find a place into your poetry?

Billy Collins: Well, if you go back to the perspective of 911, you would think when people were saying we live in these very uncertain times that it really would require humor, you know as a way of again, kind of stabilizing things, or relieving anxiety. I think of humor as a sort of device in poetry, as a way of engaging a reader and weaving a reader into something. Also I think if you provoke a laugh or a humorous reaction, you become somewhat more reliable than another speaker in a poem. At least you can be, at least you and the readers share that common ground for a line or two. And I think of humor sort of as a portal into the serious. It’s a way to access more serious business. I certainly don’t think of humor as being kind of the be all and end all of a poem. I think it’s, I like poems that start funny and then become serious, or they start serious and they crack themselves up at the end. I like something that turns either away or towards humor, so the poem is always looking for a new bearing.

Dr. Kent: When do you feel like you started to really develop your own voice as a poet? Has there been a point where all of a sudden you started to feel comfortable in your own skin with your poetry on the published page or in readings or just in general?

Billy Collins: It’s said that everyone is born with about 300 bad poems in them. And I think I had maybe 5 or 600 bad poems that I had to write, you know, and certainly in high school and graduate college, and graduate school and beyond, until I kind of got them out of my system. I think I wasn’t really in, it wasn’t until I was in my 30’s that I got a sense that I was writing in a voice that I could call my own. And I think the way I got there was a matter of choosing a different set of influences and then combining them in, I don’t think my voice is original, I think maybe if there’s anything original, it’s in the way that I’ve combined influences. You know, like taking humor from someone and taking darkness from another person, learning how to do the dash from Emily Dickinson, learning intimacy from Walt Whitman. I mean, you take so many little pieces from different poets and then if you can find a way to kind of put them into a new configuration, that’s about the most originality you can expect to achieve.

Dr. Kent: Well and there’s, some of the work that I love the best I don’t know how much you were involved in it, the animated poems that are online are just spectacular. To see, to listen to the word, to see visuals, what’s it been like to sort of be brought into, I guess Web 2.0 world?

Billy Collins: Well, I was completely complicitent in all that. That was really started at the request of the Sundance Channel, the television channel, and they wanted to, someone came up with the idea of animating some poems. And then they hired Jay Walter Thompson, the ad agency to approach me, and then they brought me into the studio and I recorded the poems, and then I was able to kind of approve of the animations. And I think all but one were completely acceptable, and they got a very hip group of animators. You know, this was not Hanna Barbera stuff, (inaudible) and it’s Eastern European influenced animators. So I’m very happy with them. I’m a great believer in poetry in surprising places. When I was poet laureate I established a poetry channel on Delta Airlines, which lasted for a year or so. So in flying around you could put on your headset and listen to the poems. But I’m all for poems on billboards or subways, poems that hop up on the radio, and poems that you see on You Tube. I think it’s, poetry needs to jump out of the book. I mean, I still write for the page, but I think it’s good that poetry is kind of getting out of the leather bound book in the study and getting into more of the mainstream of contemporary life. And you know, poetry on ipods is something that is kind of growing, a growing business.

Dr. Kent: And there was, in the poem you read there’s a line that I connected to. And the fun thing about poetry is everyone hears it or reads it in a different way. And you talked about the pen that feels, how the pen feels after it defeated the sword. There’s just a little bit of politics in that. How do you sneak in sort of your feelings about current political happenings and things like that into your poetry?

Billy Collins: Well I try not to, really. I don’t want to write poems that try to keep up with the headlines, you know, as (inaudible) called poetry, the “news that saved new.” And you can talk about yesterday, but who wants to read yesterday’s newspaper, but most of the poems I’m reading were written yesterday or 500 years ago, and the good ones still hold up. It’s a delicate balance I guess, I suppose some images that would suggest a look toward the political world find their way into the poems, but basically politics is about history, or politics is part of history. And poetry is not really about history. Poetry is about time and mortality and someone, I forget whom, defined history as “the violent misuse of time.” And I think that’s where I sort of have my sense of it, is that poetry subject is time and the passing of time, and finally human mortality.

Dr. Kent: And again, back to what you said, all of your poetry is about yourself and about death.

Billy Collins: Well, isn’t that true. It’s a little unavoidable. Well that’s a great subject that lyric poetry is mortality. You know, that’s the shadow of mortality, it falls across most pages, and the oldest theme in poetry is probably carpe diem, and that just means that you have to carpe your diems because you don’t have an infinite number of them. And that urgency that you find in lyric poetry comes out of the sense of not using your time particularly wisely, but being aware of, even if you’re squandering it, knowing that you’re doing it.

Dr. Kent: Well, I would love to hear another poem from you. Do you have another one laying around that you could read for us?

Billy Collins: Well, that’s pretty much what they do, here’s a poem, well this is a sonnet, and it’s kind of a reaction against something, which is the development of, condo developments, some gated communities, and it’s about the way they’re named. It’s a poem that’s called Golden Years.

All I do these drawn-out days is sit in my kitchen at Ridge where there are no pheasants to be seen and last time I looked, no ridge.
I could drive over to Falls and spend the day there playing bridge, but the lack of a falls and the absence of quail would only remind me of Pheasant Ridge.
I know a widow at Fox Run
and other with a Condo at Smokey Ledge. One of them smokes, and neither can run, so I’ll stick to the pledge I made to Midge.
Who frightened the fox and bulldozed the ledge? I ask in my kitchen at Pheasant Ridge.

Dr. Kent: (laughter) That so beautifully expresses the world we live in. How do you write? What’s your process? Do you wake up early in the morning, are you an owl? Do you write here and there on napkins?

Billy Collins: I don’t have any real what you would call work habits. I just write when it comes to me. There’s a lot of waiting around and there’s a certain amount of impatience that comes into play at some point. But yeah, I can write while driving, I can get up in the middle of the night and write. The best time is usually in the morning before I’ve heard a lot of language, before I’ve gotten into a conversation or been influenced by the language of journalism or the language of television or radio. You know, in the morning you’re closer to the dream state, not that I would bore anyone with my literal dreams, but you’re a little more open minded. You haven’t gone and set yourself up against the day in some way. So that’s usually the best time for me, but usually I’m ready to drop anything at any time if something comes along.

Dr. Kent: And you have a very active reading life. You do a lot of public readings. What’s the difference for you between the poetry creating and the poetry reading?

Billy Collins: Well, as I said, I write for the page. I write in a room in silence with a pencil, and in thinking about a reader, not anyone in particular, clearly, but going back over the lines as I write them and asking myself how would an average reader take that in. How would a person who doesn’t really, isn’t privy to my inner thoughts, what would they think about that? So I’m writing to that one person. But reading in front of a group of people is strange at first because it’s very different from the experience of composition. I mean here’s 50, or if you’re lucky hundreds of people listening to you, and that audience of one has strangely multiplied into an auditorium full of people. And I don’t know, there are a couple of, it’s enjoyable to read. You can sense the reaction. I mean, when you’re sitting at your desk, you don’t hear anyone applauding you, you don’t hear laughing. So it’s interesting to take the silent piece of paper, say it in front of a microphone, and then experience all of these noises of people laughing or sighing or clapping or leaving, or whatever they’re up to. But it’s a very different experience, I should say.

Dr. Kent: And in that experience you’ve spoken many places, one of which is Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I know that when my parents have any sort of guests of significance they parade them by the Praying Hands. So you read in very interesting locations, whether there or in the middle of New York City. What’s the difference for you? Do you think, who’s my audience? Who are these people staring up at me?

Billy Collins: I do remember the Praying Hands, I was taken there and took a photograph. I hate to say this, it sounds like such a cliché, but I think audiences are pretty much the same. You know, it’s like people say, people are the same wherever you go. I get the same basic reaction. Maybe it’s because people who would actually come to a poetry reading have a shared predisposition with other poetry loving people, whether it’s in Tulsa or the lower east side of New York. So I don’t find, I find if I go to England or Ireland, it’s very different, because I start realizing that my poetry is very American, there are a lot of references. Like this one poem where I mention a state flower. You know, every flower has a state, and when I read that poem in England I realized that they thought I was saying an estate flower, because they don’t have state flowers. So I didn’t realize how American my poetry was until I read it in England. I think going across the country I find that audiences are, just the fact that they would come out to hear someone read poetry makes them rather unusual people.

Dr. Kent: And what do you think about the way that a publisher or an editor or you yourself have to combine poems into a book. It’s sort of like an album or something, you have to find some sort of common thread between your poetry. How is that process?

Billy Collins: Well I just, to me, as I said, the themes are me and death, so they don’t have to worry about anything other than that. But I basically take all the poems and, if I have 60 or 70 poems that are potentially going to be squeezed into a book, I put them all out on the floor. I lay them all out on the floor in any order, just lay them down there. And then I walk around in my stocking feet and try to look down and try to figure out which ones want to be with the other ones. And that way I start forming little groups, and I don’t do it, the group is not based on a common subject, like every poem of a bird goes here. It’s much more mysterious than that. I’m not sure if I could explain why I think these poems should be with each other. But I do, in some way, and I keep shuffling them around until I get easily four different piles, and they become the sections of the book.

Dr. Kent: Well I would love to –

Billy Collins: The thing is no one, sorry –

Dr. Kent: Go ahead.

Billy Collins: I was going to say that nobody, hardly anybody reads a book of poems from front to back. You know, except maybe a reviewer or an editor. Most people pick up a book of poems and just kind of cruise around in it or, you know, treat it like a slip book almost. So all the effort an author expends in organizing his or her poems into this thematic book is entirely wasted on readers. And it’s a fact of vanity.

Dr. Kent: So I would love to hear one more poem, if you have another one handy. And the book of course is called Ballistics, and it’s available everywhere. It’s a wonderful book by Billy Collins.

Billy Collins: Well let me read a book that is certainly not political, and maybe really is potential nonsense, but I’ll read it for you anyway. It’s called Hippos on Holiday.

Hippos on Holiday

is really not the title of a movie
but if it was I would be sure to see it.
I love their short legs and their big heads,
the whole hippo look.
Hundreds of them would frolic
in the mud of a wide, slow-moving river,
and I would eat my popcorn
in the dark of a neighborhood theater.
When they opened their enormous mouths
lined with big stubby teeth
I would drink my enormous Coke.

I would be both in my seat
and in the water playing with the hippos,
which is the way it is
with a truly great movie.
Only a mean-spirited reviewer
would ask on holiday from what?

Dr. Kent: I love how you turn the tables and always keep us guessing as readers of your poetry. And it’s been such an honor chatting with you. And the book is again called Ballistics by Billy Collins.

Billy Collins: Well, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. I’m very happy to have been on your program, and talk to your listeners.

Dr. Kent: And there’s a whole bunch of great stuff that listeners can also find online, including those animated poems. Google that, or go to his Wikipedia page and there’s a whole bunch of audio readings and poems and all sorts of great things. And then support Billy Collins and his publisher by going you and getting a copy of Ballistics. Well thank you so much for being on the show, this has been a real honor, and I can’t wait to see what you come up with next.

Billy Collins: Me too. Thank you very much. Take care.

Dr. Kent: All right, my next guest on the show is a musician. His name is Johnny Helm, and we’re going to listen to a couple songs from him and then talk to him about his latest album. Here’s a song called Shed from Johnny Helm.

Posted by jamie | Filed Under TRANSCRIPTS, Entertainment, Poetry, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

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