[Intro music]
Allison Arth: Hi everybody, and welcome to the Little Oracles podcast, an oracle for the everyday creative. I’m Allison Arth. Welcome to the opening episode of a very special season, our first-ever Divinations mini-series here on the Little Oracles podcast, wherein I collaborate with another creator, not only in conversations about creative practice and process, but also in debuting new work in progress. And I am so thrilled that, for this inaugural Divinations season, I'm partnering with a lifelong mentor and a dear, dear friend: poet and author of the wonderful collection Boats for Women, and the co-creator and host of the Cultivating Voices online poetry series, Sandra Yannone. Sandy, thank you so much for joining me today.
Sandra Yannone: Allison, I could not be happier than to be with you. And to think after so many years, never imagined we would be oracles together.
AA: I know!
SLY: Little oracles!
AA: Little oracles!
SLY: But little oracles are big.
AA: Yeah! It's true; it's true. I'm so excited to– to collaborate with you after so — like you said — so many years; we've known each other for, like, a few decades at this point, and have worked together, um, in many different capacities, but this one is kind of a new one for us. So I couldn't be more excited. Before we get into the details of this project and what this miniseries is going to look like, can you, Sandy, just give us a little bit of your personal history as a creator? How do you express that creative spirit? That kind of thing?
SLY: Absolutely. And It really goes quite far back. I'll give the briefest, you know, synopsis of it, but you know, my grandmother was a painter, and when I was a little girl, we would paint together, and I think that's where I began to probably think about a process.
AA: Yeah.
SLY: And also my father was a stained glass artist, and I worked in his stained glass studio, and that certainly was about learning stages of a process. So I began really as a visual person, but that visual process carried over well into language. And I began writing poetry in high school, and then I decided I was really going to devote my life's work to poetry, and from college on, all the way up until today, that's pretty much what I've tried to lean into as much as I could around, um, my professional career that I also had.
AA: Right, right. And you also express your creativity in other ways, too; I know you’re a consummate, uh, flea market denizen. [chuckles]
SLY: [chuckles] Yes! I love to collect various and sundried bizarre objects — not bizarre to me, but for– maybe to some other people, bizarre — and off and on I've had an antique business called Kitschlandia: The Best of the Worst from the ’50s and ’60s, which you know all too well–
AA: [laughs] I do! [laughs]
SLY: –given that we created microfictions on the back of our hang tags that would go on the products that I was selling. So I think, again, doing that — working with inanimate objects — also has helped me think so much about, um, images and objects and their relationship, and how you curate something visually–
AA: Yeah; yeah!
SLY: –has always helped me think about the significance of curating something visually on the page, because I'm primarily a page poet.
AA: Right, right. Yeah; I love that comparison. And, you know, I'd never really thought about it that way, but it's so true, because you and I both have an appetite for that kind of– that kind of curation, and that kind of, you know, object gathering and– and seeing where the– the ticks and ties are between different and disparate things.
SLY: Appetite is a very kind word for it, I just want to say.
AA: [laughs] Obsession? Obsession is a little closer? [laughs]
SLY: Obsession is closer. But, you know, obsession is a great thing in art, so I don't want to dismiss it, but definitely we are in the realm of obsessions, yes.
AA: [laughs] Well, speaking of obsessions and of, you know, curating and– and putting things together, let me just sum up what we're doing for this season of Divinations, which I feel is very much about collection and composition in that true sense of the word. So, Sandy, uh, is a working poet, and I work in poetry as well, with my own personal multimedia poetry projects and poetry roleplaying games. And so, I wanted to frame up a project that would create an opportunity for the two of us. It's to work together and also spark new work and new ideas. And so a long time ago, I read this wonderful collection of poetry based letters between poets Natalie Diaz and Ada Limon; it's called Envelopes of Air. And it's a poetry exchange project they did back in 2017, and it's available at thenewyorker.com, and I'll link that in the show notes. There's a great episode about it on the New Yorker Poetry Podcast as well, and we all know that I'm a huge evangelist of that particular podcast. [chuckles] I will link that episode. But I've been thinking about that project for such a long time, and as I was, kind of, shaping up Season Three of this podcast, and, like I said, I wanted to construct some kind of opportunity to work alongside another creator, I reacquainted myself with Envelopes of Air, and I thought it would be really this amazing thing to do with a creator who really inspires me — that's you, Sandy; I'm talking about you– [chuckles]
SLY: [chuckles]
AA: –and someone that I wanted to have on the podcast anyhow. So I pitched this epistolary-style project to you, I think over Croques Madame, and I was so thrilled when you said, “Yeah, let's- let's do this.” Because, I mean, it's a commitment to ask someone to do this with you, and I– I really, I have a lot of gratitude for that. So let me explain how it's gonna work. We're going to take turns writing poems back and forth, inspired by each other's work, and also, as an added creative challenge, based on the micro-poetry, these little lexical fragments, that I developed for the multimedia digital installation I presented last fall at Orcas Paley, which was also called Little Oracles. And that kind of developed into the podcast you're listening to today — and I talked more about that in our very first episode, way back in January; I'll link that in the show notes if you want to listen. So over the course of a few episodes of this Divinations miniseries, we're each gonna write new poems and read them as works in progress, and we'll discuss the poems, and the process, and creative practice, and everything that kind of goes along with collaboration among creators. So now that you all kind of have a handle on what the season is going to look like, I would love to throw to Sandy here, and I want to know, why are you interested in this type of epistolary exchange, especially with this added lens of sharing work in progress and discussing it? Like, why does that appeal to you? So basically, why did you say yes, when I pitched this idea to you? [laughs]
SLY: Well, first of all, I want to acknowledge Natalie Diaz and Ada Limon — who is our current– the United States Poet Laureate — both such vital, creative spirits–
AA: Absolutely; yeah.
SLY: –in contemporary American– I was going to say American, but of course they're internationally known. And how wonderful that they have modeled this for all of us. The reason, though, that I was so excited is because they are echoing something, a book that was also of an epistolary nature, that I believe was probably the first, I'm going to say, modern version of this, and it's a book called Segues: A Correspondence in Poetry, written by William Stafford and Marvin Bell. I read it many years ago. William Stafford was a poet of influence for me back to my MFA program, which was in the late ’80s, early ’90s. And I loved the– the back and forth, the volley of their voices–
AA: Mm-hmm.
SLY: –and what they could learn, and pitch to each other, and see what the other one would catch. There's a lot of sports metaphors all of a sudden, but it– it's interesting that it is the sports metaphor, because this kind of writing takes stamina.
AA: Yeah.
SLY: It takes a certain kind of muscle, and muscle memory.
AA: Yeah!
SLY: And– and it really encourages, you know, the best of what we can do as people who practice writing poetry. So I've always loved this particular collaboration. I've done it in different variations with a few other poets that I want to be in conversation with. And the other thing I'll say is that, what I personally love about it, is that it amplifies process over product.
AA: Mm; mm-hmm.
SLY: So when you complete whatever cycle you are working on, yes, you have this series of interesting products, but more importantly, you've really been able to examine your own process in conversation with another poet, and to see what drives your process.
AA: Yeah.
SLY: You get to actually see what is the moment of inspiration because you're drawing off of the other poet. So you know your moment of origin from the get-go.
AA: I love that.
SLY: Which, I cannot say that about every poem I write. I can't say that I know where its moment of origin began. But in the conversation, in the correspondence, you have that beautiful added bonus to your own process in concert with your co-writer.
AA: That is so beautifully said. I love this idea of– of finding that origin point, that seed of something, that germination point–
SLY: Mm.
AA: –within the work of someone else, because the old adage of: “rising tide lifts all boats,” right?
SLY: Yes, absolutely.
AA: The idea of working together with people is the thing that helps each of us get more in touch with our own process, the moments of inspiration, and the things that we find that give us that push to write and to put something on the page.
SLY: And might I say just one other thing about inspiration: we're always inspired. I mean, we– we are the products of many lifetimes of legacies in writing, but we often, in our own process, can get lost in that vacuum. I can put myself in my own soundproof booth and forget who are the voices that are the surround-sound around my poetry. In the correspondence, we know.
AA: Yeah!
SLY: It's almost like a concentric circle; we know the first circle, and probably that's going to lead us to consider the other circles: you know, our– our legacies.
AA: Yes. This– this idea of concentric circles, and how it is the locus of inspiration. I– I did an episode in Season Two about, kind of, this overarching fallacy, I think, that inspiration is locationally based, in the sense that there are certain codified or societally sanctioned sites of inspiration, and they're usually, uh, relegated to things like, uh, visual art and, uh, music and these– these kind of larger categories. But like you said, inspiration is all around us, and it can be in a legacy; it can be in something that we happen to see outside the window; it can be in that moment that you walk into a junk shop and you see that one shining piece that reminds you of the clock that was sitting on the mantle in your childhood home. And those are all ripe for inspiration and something that can drive something forward; some spark; some creative moment for you and some creative output.
SLY: I mean, what I really appreciate about what we're doing here and modeling for, what I hope other people will do–
AA: Yeah; yeah!
SLY: –to– to– to serve as inspiration for others to, you know, jump on the bandwagon here–
AA: Absolutely!
SLY: –and find their creative partner and do this, is that, you know, I'm thinking about being at the antique shop, Finders Keepers, where I had my booth for many years, and thinking about when I would work there and walk around — I was doing, like, security–
AA: [chuckles]
SLY: –but really you'd be in conversation with people, and you'd hear the story of how an object moved them.
AA: Yes.
SLY: And it usually was something their grandmother had, their grandfather had, and it's a portal to a story. And these portals, we all have access to them. This is what's so important is that this is not relegated to only the poets. In fact, we're all poets.
AA: Yes! [laughs]
SLY: Every single one of us. It is about how we learn to listen, and learn to see — or I'm going to say learn to re-see, because we've always, always, always had it.
AA: Yes.
SLY: We've had our imaginations and our ability to create and to play. We’ve always had it, and this is about, “How can we return to our own origins of those practices?”
AA: Oh, Sandy! This is precisely what the Little Oracles podcast as a whole is all about; you have summed it up in such a beautiful way. And yeah, I couldn't– I couldn't be happier right now, to be perfectly honest with you. [laughs] But kind of moving from this idea that– that we all have this inspiration and that we all have access to that, and it's a portal to stories, and stories are kind of all around us, I want to talk a little bit about something that you said as we were chatting about this project, and kind of trying to get our arms around it and figure out what the structure was going to be and how it was going to work: and you said this wonderful thing; you said, “I love talking about the way a poem gets made.” And I feel like there's a– there's a natural dovetail there with what you were just talking about with, uh, exposing process, and figuring out our process, and– and seeing that within the context of this epistolary-style poetry exchange. So I'm just wondering if you could talk more about that idea of how much you love talking about the way a poem gets made. Why does that resonate with you?
SLY: In terms of setting– setting up what I'll say about my own process of how a poem gets made, I'm reminded of something that another poet, a colleague of mine, Gail Tremblay — brilliant, brilliant poet; she just passed away this spring — and what I'm about to share with you is gonna be an epigraph to one of the sections in my new book that's coming out. She said, “Each morning I envision the things I want to make. I let myself be possessed by what I will learn by making it. I think when an artist lets their work teach them what the world needs them to say. Each day is a gift and one learns. that the work is worth doing.”
AA: Wow; wow.
SLY: So that's Gail Tremblay. It resonates so deeply with me because the making of a poem is like living inside revelations. I love the process of discovery, and it's in the making that discoveries happen.
AA: Mm.
SLY: And it doesn't always– it's not always like at the height of, [singing] Ahh!, you know, like the skies are opening–
AA: [laughs] Yeah. [laughs] Light streaming–
SLY: Right; right, right, right; you know, it's not always like that. But the practice of looking to make the poem allows for you to at least follow that path, and have a chance at having that revelation, having that discovery, having that a-ha! moment that can lead to things further down the line for your process.
AA: Yeah.
SLY: It can be a moment that, unbeknownst to you, you might come back to many, many times in your life as an artist. Like, we never know what we will need to use. And so, I think the best thing is to practice making.
AA: Yes.
SLY: Because it's in the making that we will come to discover what it is that we need, want, desire to say, and we will become accustomed to feeling comfortable in our own skins doing that.
AA: Well, and I love what you're saying because it's applicable across basically any artistic practice you have, right? It's larger than just a focus on poetry itself. Like, people can take this idea of the practice of making and apply it to whatever they want to do; there's such a value in that practice and that making. And, you know, you're touching on this idea of practice, and of revision, and focus, and finding that thing: that a-ha! moment within whatever you've done. There's this really– this really interesting thing that Richard Hugo wrote in The Triggering Town — you know this.
SLY: Love The Triggering Town. I love Hugo.
AA: [laughs] Exactly!
SLY: He's another one of my influences.
AA: Yeah, yeah. Um, so it's this idea that the initial concept for the poem — and you can apply this to kind of any artistic practice, I think, in some respects — but the initial concept of the poem is just kind of where it starts, until “the work reveals itself to you.” And I think that– that he uses that word “reveal” so beautifully, because he says that you have to “switch your allegiance from the triggering subject to the words.”
SLY: Mm.
AA: And I love this idea that you're funneling down, and you're winnowing, and you're trying to find that a-ha! moment in that process of– of revision, and that process of practice.
SLY: you know, that's the best pledge of allegiance I can ever imagine taking.
AA: [laughs]
SLY: There it is; I mean, you know, there– there it is. And, you know, Hugo wrote a book, in addition to The Triggering Town — which is a book of essays on– on the making; on– on creativity. His book, 31 Letters and 13 Dreams, is also epistolary, right?
AA: Oh, yeah!
SLY: It’s also a conversation with other poets. So I– I love– I love when we can, kind of, fold in these, you know, these other voices. I'm also thinking about Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich, how they were in conversation with each other.
AA: Yes.
SLY: I mean, there's so many vital conversations in our legacies, that the best thing we can do is call in all their strength. And we're just the next in the line to leave something behind for others to utilize.
AA: Yeah; I love this idea of, of cross pollination of collaboration, of sharing the work that we're doing with others while it's being made, while it's in progress. And what I think is so fascinating about this conversation is this aspect of writing from this point of inspiration, this jumping off point that we're seeing in someone else's work. And this project that we– you and I are doing right now, we are adding, kind of, a little bit of a constraint, in the sense of: we're not only being inspired by each other's work, but we're also focusing in on an actual word, an actual piece of diction, that we are challenging ourselves to incorporate into each of our poems, and those are taken from the Little Oracles lexical fragments, right? So what is it about writing from constraints that particularly excites you?
SLY: Well, one of the other obsessions of mine is Harry Houdini.
AA: [laughs]
SLY: Look, the guy wore a straight jacket–
AA: Mm-hmm.
SLY: –a lot of the time; [chuckles] that's a constraint if there ever was one!
AA: Yes.
SLY: –a straight jacket.
AA: [laughs] Yeah.
SLY: And there is nothing better as a writer than being the escape artist. In particular, in particular relation to writing sonnets. There's 14 lines: it's a box.
AA: Oh, tell me more about that.
SLY: You are put in a box and you are told that you have to write your way out of the box and it creates pathways you would never take. It forces you to find keys to unlock locks that you did not know even existed. It is beautiful.
AA: Yeah.
SLY: It also allows you to be a bit of a ventriloquist. You know, you get to take on voices that you didn't know you had access to. Again, we come back to this idea of play. It does allow you to play in a different way than if you were not utilizing a constraint. So I really, whenever possible, take up the challenge of any prompt, of any constraint, because I feel like: oh, you're inviting me to a magic show. Or, you're inviting me to be the magician! Let me put my top hat on and get to work!
AA: [laughs] Yeah. Who would– who would refuse that opportunity?
SLY: I mean, who doesn't– yeah! — who refuses that?
AA: Yes! Who would– who would refuse that opportunity to be that– that magician, and have that chance to reveal, as it were, in the words of Richard Hugo. So as we look ahead to our next episode: Sandy, would you share just a few lines of the first poem we're going to discuss, which is one that you wrote, just as a little teaser?
SLY: Sure. I chose the word “twine,” and the working title for this first poem that we're using as the launch for the rest of the series is called “The Stars on the Snake River.”
We twined our way up or down
the mountain at the edge
of the Snake River. We were not
anywhere a map could call
home. We were not anywhere
a map could comprehend.
AA: Mm. Thank you so much; I'm so excited to dig into this poem with you, and to start writing to it and sharing that exchange with you. This is going to be just so inspiring and thrilling. And before we go, is there anything that you want to shout out and where can we find you online? Where can we get more Sandy?
SLY: Well, I do have a website, of course, as people do now.
AA: [chuckles]
SLY: So it's www dot sandra yannone dot com. And you can find me the first three Sundays of every month hosting Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry; that information is on my website as well, and we're on Facebook, and we're accessible through Zoom. And so I hope, if you are interested in sharing your poetry and being in community with other poets, I welcome you to join our international, intersectional, intergenerational group; we have over 4,000 members worldwide.
AA: Amazing. Thank you so much. You can follow Little Oracles on Instagram at little oracles, and on the blog at little oracles dot com for more big book energy and creativity content. And, as always, take care, keep creating, and stay divine.
[Outro music]
[Secret outtake]
AA: I'm floored right now, Sandy.
SLY: [laughs]
AA: I'm just going to step back for five seconds. [laughs] I'm having a moment.
SLY: Okay, having a moment; I’m having a moment.
AA: Woo!
SLY: Woo!
AA: Woo!
SLY: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're living this book!
AA: [strained voice] We're living the book!
SLY: Poetry as spellcasting.
AA: Yep. Okay. I'm pulling it together.
SLY: Okay.
AA: Pulling it together.
SLY: All right.