Write On Four Corners with DelSheree Gladden: Interview with Carol Moldaw

[Music] welcome back to right on four corners I'm your host deler gladen I a USA Today best-selling author of over 30 published novels and I'm a ninth grade English teacher and on this week's episode I am excited to have Santa Fe author Carol moldow talking about her newest poetry collection go figure Carol go ahead and introduce yourself thank you do I'm Carol moldow and I go figure is my seventh book of poems I live in Santa Fe for I've been in New Mexico since 1990 and for the first 25 years almost I lived in the poak valley did I already say I'm from Northern California and have lived in the east coast and I feel like everything interesting that I have to say is in the poems so a short introduction that is perfectly fine we will jump in and get to hear some of the poems and talk about them tell us first a little bit about the collection go figure kind of where the concept came from in some of the topic and themes that you get into with the Poetry in this collection sure well first we'll talk about the title go figure it's the title of one of the poems but what I really liked many things about it when it came to me one is that it's kind of a vernacular you know an expression go figure like a kind of quizzical and I I like poems that allow the reader to draw their own conclusions so I like that title go figure and then also there are a number of poems in the collection that reference art and artists and visual art in particular and figurative art so the title also resonates on that level I don't tend to have a concept when I start a book or even when I start a poem I let it lead me so there's a process of discovery and surprise for me when I'm writing but you know what I discovered as the poems started accumulating where there are a lot of poems that really are about growing up with the expectations that I was brought up with as a girl and as a woman and my examining and sometimes pushing against some of those expectations and I I'll just add one more thing that during the writing of it my mother who is alive she has Alzheimer's which is a progressive disease and so there are a number of poems about her and my reflecting back on her and our relationship and also the progression of that really awful disease well and I find that very interesting I don't have a background in poetry so getting to do this show has really introduced me to a writer range and let me talk to more poets which has been wonderful and it's been interesting to see as I've been doing this how poets approach putting together a collection sometimes it's sifting through poems created over a large period of time or sometimes going into it with I'm focusing on this idea and then either stuff that's already been written or creating new poems to put together based on that theme and I'm intrigued that you don't go into it with the concept because even though you do cover a variety of ideas and topics and themes in this they really come together and relate back to each other so well that's interesting and maybe kind of just speaking to like you said where you were at that point in your life and kind of where your thoughts are going and settling on in this time period of what you're experiencing and dealing with well I appreciate that it coheres the poems were written over approximately a seven-year period And I think what happens I think you know as you must know all writers tend to have their obsessions and obsessions you know come and go and resurface and I think as the poem start to accumulate I started to see that there were certain things and maybe I pushed on those a little bit but I really wanted the manuscript to have it's it's all in one section it's not divided a lot of poetry collections are divided into sections and you can see oh here are the poems about the mother you know or here are the poems about when the poet was in some other part of the world and I wanted this to have a flow and a kind of an EB in a flow similar to how I feel we are in our our life in the mixture of our conscious and our unconscious and things come and go and reappear well it kind of struck me that like you said it wasn't it's not chronological it's not in a specific pattern what kind of struck me was that it feels like when you're going about your day just going through life you remember certain things or you're experiencing something so your thoughts kind of go where those take you and it felt like that going through and reading the collection somewhere in the past the present some you kind of you introduce like strut guard I may be saying that wrong and then you you Circle back to it a little bit later where you you have those moments when you're just going throughout your day-to-day life where it's like oh yeah remember that one time that that happened and then it pops back up but in between that you've got your day-to-day experiences and the pieces of life that just come and go so it felt like a very natural flow throughout the collection so glad that is what I wanted and it's interesting that sgard poem which I hadn't thought of reading but you know maybe I will the first one it's a story I used to tell a lot about my mother being trapped in it and I never was able to write it and then you know writing one and then thinking just sort of writing the story and then thinking about it in the context of my mother's illness you know provoked a whole second poem and it is the way the daily life provokes thoughts and memories but writing itself and crafting something also allows things to come up from the from the unconscious or that one just hadn't expected absolutely I think especially when you're in a Writing Practice where your mind is trained basically to go into that kind of creative mode to bring up something that may be worth writing about or a bit of inspiration that will lead you somewhere else and I that's something I've been trying to cultivate a little bit more cuz I've gotten out of the practice of writing over the last few years and it's been a focus for my summer of trying to build that that daily practice it's very it can be it is hard but it's a wonderful discipline as as you know um it's just so different from everything else and I find I'm a kind of a slow writer and I find I have to allow so much time for silence for just you know being at ease with things I'm not pleased with and being patient until something catches and then when something catches you know then I feel I feel like I'm like a dog with a bone I'm very persistent and one thing I learned a long time ago is that craft in poetry craft can refer to meter or Rhyme or tonal things but sometimes concentrating on Craft is what allows things to come out sometimes concentrating on thought is more repressive or becomes too self-conscious for me which is why I don't choose a theme ahead of time I find that that just represses anything interesting that that actually might come up for me everybody's different oh that is interesting I've always been more of a pancer type writer I don't usually sit down and outline or do a detailed plot from start to finish but as I've been trying to get back into writing and creating a better practice for myself I had kind of started out that way this summer of just I'd had an idea that had been kind of hanging around in the back of my mind for a while and it was like okay I'm just going to start with that I'm just going to go and see where it takes me and I'd gotten through about 12 chapters and I had to stop your practice slowly getting there it was interesting because as I go through and write I share what I'm doing and kind of discuss it with my boyfriend Chris and he's really good at finding those areas of have you thought this part all the way or take that a step further and see where that's going to take you and how it's going to impact the story and I got to about that like 12 chapter Mark I was just like there are so many things that I wasn't thinking about when I started this that now like I was keeping a list on one of the little digital sticky note things on my computer of okay I need to add this I need to fix this I need to go back to this section and the list was getting so long and I was like okay I got to stop writing new stuff I need to go back and take care of all this other cuz my mind was getting so cluttered up with everything that I needed to fix because like I wasn't thinking about any of those basic craft elements that you need that really inform what you're doing as a writer and so it's been a really interesting practice to go back now and go through that list and be like okay yeah like I just wasn't considering all of these really basic elements of writing I was just like BL like get it all down on the page and let's see what comes out and I I'm kind of looking back and then it's like okay I need to do a little bit better about balancing that approach of I'm still probably never going to be like a detailed hardcore outliner but taking that time like you said like sitting with it letting myself think through and feel where something's going and what the issues are and not just barreling through well well it's interesting I think well first of all I I would be daunted to write a novel I wrote a short novel many years ago called the widen name but it's more of a poetic novel but I think you know when I talk about craft I'm not so much I think as a novelist you are thinking Craft part of that is balancing the plot or you know how characters interact and I mean almost more just the M for me craft has a lot to do with the music of a poem and so if I concentrate on on that you know on how it's resounding with what I think of as my inner tuning fork and sometimes I don't even think about what I'm writing and that allows for more to come out I mean I I would never I'm not an outliner I say I don't plot my poems I like to see how they evolve and I like them to surprise me I teach privately and I I always tell my my students you know if you're bored when you're reading through something or or you're confused the reader is only going to be more so more bored more confused so we have to our inner voices I think yeah definitely well want to give you a chance to share some of the poems with us let me find the right page yeah cuz I I will keep talking forever and I don't want to use up all the time mentioned lessons and it kind of I think it gives a good synopsis of the expectations of you know how I was brought up as a girl as a kind of supportive a woman as a supportive creature as opposed to being the center of her own universe so would that should I start with lessons that would be great yeah lessons taught as a girl to inquire after a man's day to affirm with nod or smile what he says went right to flutter the Stray hand off shoulder or thigh and emit a full scale range of fluted laughter to Fain disbelief Inspire confidence taught not how to embellish but to be my self embellishment in attentiveness and inattention assume the same wrapped mask thank you for sharing that this one stuck out to me particularly it's so interesting to see how certain aspects of society change over time and how they don't and especially within specific cultural groups I was raised Mormon so I really resonated with a lot of the things that you bring up as far as those expectations because a lot of those whether spoken or just learned from example were a lot of those same lessons that I was taught growing up that I carried into my adult life and my marriage and that really caused a lot of problems over time their heart right their heart is shap yeah it's taken a long time to re-evaluate and realize you know that those were things that were taught to me those are not incapable truths of life that I need to follow and adhere and it's like even now you know it turn 40 this year and there are still things that yeah I don't I don't need to do that or see things that way like I I can set my own expectations yeah it's it's not an easy frame of mind to shift no it's not and I think when you're a writer it's so important in order well particularly a poet who writes you know I I usually write in the first person and so it's my point of view it's what I've perceived or what I've been thinking about or you know an image that I thought of that goes onto the page and there has to be a sense of self you know in order to do that a self not dependent on you know I mean I think in this poem I was particularly thinking of dinner parties where you know it's just so easy to spend a whole evening for a woman asking about a man what a man does and and never being really presenting oneself I mean even coming on this radio you know to come and talk about my poetry on the radio video it's the opposite of of how I was taught you know I should be asking the questions and drawing somebody out as opposed to being able to present myself and my work in a you know interesting life it it's something that takes a focus effort to relearn some of those lessons and to shake off you know what what we experience as young people embeds itself very deeply and it's something that I think we see in a lot of areas of life today whether it's you know religious beliefs political ideations how a person should live the type of existence those those are very deeply rooted in a lot of people and for some like almost impossible to change the mindset or the world view even as adults who've experienced the world yeah in so many ways I think that shapes people and it can be really challenging to see another way to live how about if I read a slightly I was going to read a slightly longer poem if that's all right I think it's easy to follow arthritis do that oh absolutely yeah I was G to say I definitely wanted to get to that one well the first poem references you know my thinking about what I was taught as a girl and this poem it starts with a conversation so it does take place I'd say within you know within my adulthood within the last few years before my mother's illness really kicked in but anyway it's called arthritis save your hands my mother says seeing me untwist a Jar's tight cap just the way she used to tell me not to let boys fool around or feel my breath keep them fresh for marriage as if they were actual fruit I scoffed to think they could bruise scuff soften rot wither I look down now at my knuckly thumb my index finger permanently a skew in the same classic crook as hers called a Swan's neck as if snapped it's that pronounced even as I type wondering how long I'll be able to each joint in my left hand needing to be hoisted prodded into place one knuckle like a clock style tick ticking as it's turned to open Bend or unbend i b at the the idea that we can overuse ourselves must parcel out and Pace our energy so as not to run out of any necessary component while still alive the definition of necessary necessarily suffering change over time the only certainty is uncertainty I thought I knew so ignored whatever she said about boys and sex per version of a story never never mind it made me laugh the way she made up Traditions that we didn't kiss boys until a certain age we didn't fool around what we what part of me was she no part I could put my finger on how odd then one day to find her half napping in her room talking first to herself and then to me about a boy she used to know her friend brother who she kissed she said just because he wanted her to now why would I do that she mused distraught a new and so freshly stung by the self- Betrayal I reached across the gulf my father left to her side of their bed and stroked my future hand thank you for sharing that one I think that's a great one to follow up with lessons um it really it was another one that stuck out to me as well just thinking about that shift in perspective that we gain over time and this one especially with the physical aspect of it was another thing I related to just because I was certain I used to be a dental hygienist so like one of my hands is all messed up and I had surgery on my ankle recently cuz that got messed up from overuse and falling so it it was interesting to read that and think about like yeah how much some of that has changed over time on on different levels yes on the physical we we have to well we definitely become more aware of our bodies and its limitations and what we can do to mitigate some of the damage that our younger years may have caused but how much of that you know happens in other areas of Our Lives as well I mean this is an example of a poem I I wanted to write about for some reason about art right and my arthritis is isn't quite as bad now as it was when I wrote that poem so but in any case you know an example of when I started writing about it I had no idea that I would end up having in the poem things my mother had told me about boys or or that at the very end my father would come up you know who who died many years before this this poem takes place or a few probably a few years before this poem takes place so just the process of writing it and you know thinking about well what do I share with my mother how are we different you know what did I think we didn't share that we actually do share and it just brought up much more than than I would have thought when I started out and I I love that I I love the way the process leads one one kind of shows it yeah and it's you never quite know where it's going to take you um I think in in many forms of that's true you maybe start with one idea or thought or goal and the process of actually developing that and going through it it's never quite what you expected it to be which I think is is a wonderful part of creating anything um it it never is you know the exact picture of what maybe you imagined or what's in the cookbook or you know whatever it is that you you had in your mind cuz it's a process it's an exploration of something and that's going to be different every time you attempt it and different between people as well yeah I think we may have time for for one possibly two more okay um do you have anything you'd like me to read that you want to be sure I read um you know I really enjoyed shoe box if you want to do that one read that shoe box busy little monkey mind at work while I watch the dance of willow leaves outside our window and remember other bedrooms the way I recall past lives vague but plausible camouflage one year beneath a crackle printed comforter I Fred about the future another day banned out on a terry cloth chz I Pine for the past for the bristle haired troll dolls I kept in a shoe box when I was 10 and the lined index cards on which I wrote unconnected nouns over and over each a skeleton key keyed only to itself unselfconscious as a series of selfies I love that last line well I have to say that you know one thing I I do enjoy a touch of humor in my writing um and I don't always know if it comes through but I think that last line you know it has that sort of irony or how unselfconscious our selfies really yeah it's it's an interesting comparison because even though you know if you think about someone in a private space with nobody else around taking selfies of themselves you're still kind of putting on a show even just for yourself and it's an interesting I think moment I have a friend who talked about how selfies are kind of a form of mirror work of looking at yourself more deeply and kind of seeing the subtle differences you express deter you know based on emotions or what your thoughts or feelings are in that moment um which was an interesting conversation we had about that because it wasn't something I had thought about before with selfies um you kind I think they kind of get a negative connotation of like caring too much about what you look like or focusing too much on yourself at time yeah that showing off so it was interesting to see that contrast and I kind of thought of that um at the end of this poem that conversation I'd had with Amy because you think of everything else that's described in the poem of these moments where you can just enjoy the thing that you enjoy the the bristle hair troll dolls I love um it made me think of when I was little the collection of My Little Ponies I had there was like way too many of them we would pick them up at garage sales like all the time me and my little sister and I don't even know how many we had but now it's kind of like what a what a goofy thing now to like you know think back to being like so obsessed with My Little Ponies but at the time like you know we loved them we had a great time playing with our My Little Ponies and doing their hair and brushing them all of those things where it's like you know you have those time in the Moment Like You can just enjoy something that you love and it's harder to find those moments as an adult at times yes I I think there's another level to the poem too where you know I've realized that you know people sometimes say to me oh your your poetry is very personal and I want to say well my poetry operates on a personal level and you know and then what and then I'm always thrilled when somebody like as you're saying you know you you find things in it and and relate to it it it resounds to you on a personal level as well it's and so in some ways you know the poem doesn't make this explicit but you you know is writing like a series of selfies it's it's so it's it's kind of undercutting itself a little bit and and playing with with the idea of of writing poetry I love that that's a great way to look at it thank you um we have I think time for one more was there one last one that you would like to share well I'd like to read meditation in the open air garage okay um I'm very forunate you know we live in Santa Fe and as you know you know Northern New Mexico is is a high desert and so we we do have we have these you know incredible and old trees on where we live and so that enters into this poem okay that meditation in the open air garage leaves have no choice but to articulate the wind Aspens like zills a glint and a tilt the willow a lone zither riffling the cottonwoods at dusk winds find me cushioned against the concrete in the open air garage facing the trees the drive the road the mountains up the Canyon's other side until an onrush Bellows a Mindless heartless ecstasy through the empty sack of me thank you for sharing that that's a it's a wonderful moment to have captured to and and I believe that's the last one in the collection R it is thank you you know the I've always loved this sound of wind in in leaves and and you know meditating I this was the closest I could come to articulating myself as a leaf in the wind and I like that I think that's something that is a very soothing sound for one I like to listen to soundscapes like that when I'm having trouble sleeping and things like that the the wind um I have one that I like it's a campfire it's just the sound of a campfire crackling that I really like but just I I think we get so busy in day-to-day life and we have so much on our mind that taking those moments to just sit to listen to be part of what's happening in that moment hard to remind ourselves to stop and do at times but I think an important practice wonderful things about reading poetry is as well as writing it it forces you to slow down it forces you to to stop and and be in the moment and really you know pay attention syllable by syllable or second by second however you prefer to to the moment absolutely yeah it's such a different practice reading poetry over you know novels or even short stories longer forms like that it really pushes you to pay attention and to understand that every word was chosen very specifically well we are at the point to start wrapping up um so I did want to remind our readers that the collection is called go figure by Carol moldow and Carol where can people find you and your work online I do have a website which is www Carol moldow c a r o l m o l d aw.com the book's being published by fourway book in New York and I know it's a it it's publication date is September 15th but I know if you go to fourways website the book has a page and it's available for pre-order probably available onon as well but on my website there are individual poems that there are links to individual poems that have you know been published online well thank you so much Carol for taking the time to chat with me today I really enjoyed getting the chance to read your poetry and then to be able to discuss it with you and share it with our listeners thank you so much dri I've enjoyed this as well [Music]