Owen Lewis, A PRAYER OF SIX WINGS
[0:00]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Book to Zibi.
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[0:44]Owen Lewis is the author of A Prayer of Six Wings.
[0:48]Owen is the author of four collections of poetry and three chat books.
[0:52]Honors include the 2024 E. Cummings Prize, the 2023 Guernsey International Poetry Prize,
[0:59]the 2023 Rumi Prize for Poetry, the International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine,
[1:06]and the Gene Petrick Chatbuck Award.
[1:08]At Columbia University, he is a professor of psychiatry in the Department of Medical Humanities
[1:12]and Ethics and teaches narrative medicine.
[1:14]Welcome, Owen.
[1:15]Thank you so much for coming on Totally Book to Zibi to talk about your beautiful poetry
[1:20]collection of prayer of six wings, which is so beautiful and so moving.
[1:27]Congratulations.
[1:28]Thank you so much.
[1:29]Thank you.
[1:30]Why don't you give an overview of this beautiful, slim, poignant collection?
[1:37]Okay.
[1:38]Well, as so many Jews worldwide, October 7th hit all of us, and the overtones to the show
[1:49]we're haunting for most of us.
[1:52]On top of that, my personal story is complicated by having a daughter who lives in Israel
[2:01]two grandchildren then three now.
[2:05]Thank God.
[2:06]Awesome stuff.
[2:08]And so it's a new level of worry when you have those family, although everyone, all 1200
[2:19]murdered that day felt like family.
[2:22]So in many ways the kind of blue through me, you know, I can tell you how I found my
[2:29]hook into it, but it both blew through me and kept me together for that year of very intense
[2:37]worrying and often not knowing what to do with your worry, then compounded by how quickly
[2:44]the world turned against Israel, began to see Israel as the aggressor.
[2:50]And I live, you know, the epicenter it seemed to me of the destruction of hostage posters
[2:59]was 79th and Broadway.
[3:01]And every morning, the posters were ripped down, defaced, terrible words written over
[3:07]the posters.
[3:08]You'd seen them in pieces.
[3:10]And the next day, due to flee put back, and I was walking back from Lincoln Center
[3:14]one night, side to side was someone who was ripping down a poster.
[3:20]I was about to say something.
[3:22]I mean, he probably sensed the words coming out of my mouth.
[3:26]Fortunately, my wife pulled me back a little.
[3:29]He raised the scissors at me like take a step closer and I'm going to take you out.
[3:37]And so it felt like the war was not just a distant war with, but was really being fought
[3:43]right here in New York.
[3:45]And there was no separation.
[3:47]And so, you know, my start, you know, begins, these are my cousins.
[3:54]That line came to me.
[3:55]My wife has a distant cousin whose child was at the adult child was at the festival.
[4:02]She got out.
[4:03]Thank God.
[4:04]So that was my first line.
[4:05]The second, that was my first poem.
[4:07]The second, those haunting images of Noah Arghamani, the beautiful young woman being thrown
[4:14]over the motorcycle.
[4:16]And of course, my first granddaughter's name, Noah, so that first poem shifts from images
[4:22]of Noah to my Noah, and it could be that that name repeats as you read.
[4:30]And so they're all my Noah's, right?
[4:33]The third poem.
[4:34]And then I thought there was, it just took me away.
[4:38]The first hostage released was, if you can recall, there's an older woman who said shalom
[4:46]to her captors.
[4:47]Her name was Yohavet Litchitz.
[4:50]And in Minsk, that was our family name, you know.
[4:55]So again, I had this immediate tie in, not only as a people, but as very specific persons
[5:05]by name, you know.
[5:07]So then there was no stopping it, there was no stopping the book after that.
[5:11]Oh my gosh.
[5:12]Well, I've read so much about October 7th, the aftermath, the feelings, all of it, but
[5:19]there was something different about this.
[5:22]You not only did you talk about your own fear as a father, as a grandfather, you also
[5:30]sort of interspersed all of these New York Times articles and factual things, you're giving
[5:36]us a timeline, but you're also then punctuating it with your own sort of heart wounds,
[5:42]if you will.
[5:43]And then little snippets, like you have this here, I'm just going to read this one thing.
[5:47]You have this one short poem called Overheard in a New York Restaurant.
[5:50]I can't talk about Israel tonight.
[5:52]I know.
[5:53]I can't not talk about Israel tonight.
[5:54]I know.
[5:55]Can we talk about here?
[5:57]Sure.
[5:58]Let's try to talk about here.
[6:00]I mean, it's like you captured the moment.
[6:03]Like this is how we all feel, like to talk, to not talk, like nobody knows, basically
[6:08]nobody knows how to get through this time.
[6:10]And that is what all of the essays, the problems of try to do, like to intellectualize
[6:16]it, to understand it, to put words to it.
[6:20]And your experience at Columbia getting caught, like in the mob, talk about that, seem
[6:25]too.
[6:26]I mean, you're in it.
[6:27]You're really in it in every way.
[6:28]Right.
[6:29]No, that's, I think you point out something very essential.
[6:34]It might seem like poetic journalism, but I was obsessed with headlines.
[6:39]What now?
[6:40]What now?
[6:41]What's today?
[6:42]What's today?
[6:43]So interspersing those headlines, I mean, I'm not reporting the news per se.
[6:48]I think it's William Carlos Williams, who says something like, I'm going to paraphrase
[6:52]it.
[6:53]Poorly, poets don't report on the news yet people die for the lack of what they bring
[6:59]to the news.
[7:00]That was a bad paraphrase, but I get the gist.
[7:03]Yeah.
[7:04]So yeah, the headlines oriented in time and part of what I thought was a way of recording
[7:15]somewhat objectively, but subjectively, this was a year I lived through.
[7:21]This was a year we all lived through.
[7:23]And at a time when the poetry establishment was really disallowing the validity of Jewish
[7:33]suffering and disallowing, marginalizing the experience of Jews, it felt like this set of experiences
[7:44]going to be lost.
[7:45]It has to be recorded.
[7:48]And I think many of my colleagues in the poetry world are really pushing for people to
[7:56]make statements about genocide.
[7:58]I just came from AWP, where I guess I'm a little late to the party, but this whole concept
[8:07]of the weaponization of Jewish memory and the weaponization of Jewish trauma.
[8:13]I thought this isn't really logical.
[8:16]If they wanted to call it, some people use Jewish trauma as a justification.
[8:23]Yes, there are people who do that.
[8:26]But to go right to that word, weaponization is fighting a battle that shouldn't be, I mean,
[8:34]if anything, the poets should be out front saying, let's listen to one another.
[8:39]But it's happening a little bit, but not as much.
[8:42]So as far as this book, I felt I needed to make a record.
[8:47]And that was both some of the headlines which signified where we were.
[8:53]And my personal timeline in this.
[8:56]Well, by the way, at AWP, there was an email that went out to everybody who was moderating
[9:03]ahead of time suggesting that they all stand up in support of against the genocide and
[9:09]all of that.
[9:11]Well, it's just, the whole thing is mind blowing how this conflict is right here.
[9:17]It is everywhere.
[9:18]It is surrounding us literally on the streets and in the business and in the work and
[9:24]in all of it.
[9:25]So yeah.
[9:26]I have to say to AWP's credit last year, and I was very tense.
[9:32]I did a panel, I led two panels, one on the poetry of aging, that's a whole other story.
[9:39]The panel was called damage bodies in the world, writing the Jewish body and body politic,
[9:48]which was really a way of saying, we really want to talk about institutional and social
[9:54]anti-Semitism as well as personal anti-Semitism.
[9:57]I was very apprehensive that our panel was.
[10:00]going to be disrupted.
[10:01]And AWP did a very good job this year.
[10:03]Last year, anything Jewish was disrupted in a very,
[10:09]not nice way.
[10:11]But they really allowed and made sure
[10:16]that the spaces were safe.
[10:18]So I have to credit them.
[10:21]Were you an AWP just now?
[10:22]I didn't go.
[10:23]One of my colleagues went, but I couldn't go.
[10:26]It's a lot.
[10:27]But I got some reports.
[10:28]So to your own personal story,
[10:32]so your daughter is a musician.
[10:34]Yes.
[10:35]Can I read this, a belief in order, poem that you wrote?
[10:37]You say a belief in order.
[10:39]My daughter returns to bring music to a stunned country.
[10:43]Her orchestra, straining in every note,
[10:46]still echoing halls once overfilled,
[10:49]once Beethoven's, Tempenied Fifth.
[10:51]I wanted to tell her to be safe, stay in New York.
[10:54]She knew all I didn't say.
[10:56]If I hear missiles, she stays in their midst
[10:59]to rally the percussions, the clear voices
[11:01]of a congregation of horns, flutes, luring, frightened,
[11:05]hopos, back to the singing banyans, dreaming doves
[11:10]to the date palms, the strings full timber,
[11:12]seeking the autumn gardens, blue, muskari,
[11:15]the fields scented white, saffron, crocus.
[11:18]They're necessary music that heals,
[11:20]even as it anticipates the wounds.
[11:23]Did I even pronounce all that right?
[11:24]That was so beautiful.
[11:26]You did it.
[11:27]You read it beautifully, Zippy.
[11:28]Oh, thank you.
[11:29]Thank you.
[11:30]You can take me on the road with you if you like.
[11:31]Oppos are the national bird of Israel.
[11:34]Okay.
[11:35]And the flowers were chosen their fall flowers,
[11:37]but the blue and white.
[11:39]But yes, she returned with absolute,
[11:41]I mean, I got them to come back briefly,
[11:46]but they turned right around and went back.
[11:50]Especially as the orchestra was beginning
[11:53]to perform, they did a lot of outreach.
[11:55]This is the orchestra that plays for the Israeli opera.
[11:59]They have a symphonic series
[12:01]and such a commitment to bring art,
[12:04]to not let that be lost in the midst of this trauma.
[12:08]So, I was very proud of her.
[12:10]Well, you can feel your pride
[12:13]and you can feel your pain and the coexistence of the two,
[12:17]I think adds so much depth.
[12:19]We want our kids to be close and safe.
[12:22]We want them to accomplish.
[12:23]We want them to do what makes them happy.
[12:26]And yet that instinct to protect,
[12:28]it just like doesn't go away, right?
[12:30]Right.
[12:32]Never.
[12:33]And there's a bit of this playing music
[12:37]on the Titanic vibe in the poems,
[12:40]like what happens, but she's just doing it.
[12:43]Like she's the musician and no matter what happens,
[12:46]it's beautiful with the sirens that come later.
[12:49]And I mean, just amazing.
[12:51]You have the one seen with your granddaughter's birthday
[12:53]party where everyone has to climb up a ladder,
[12:56]go into the safe room for five minutes,
[13:00]then go back down and at the end, your daughter is like,
[13:02]why is my birthday, my granddaughters is like,
[13:05]well, why is it over?
[13:06]Why is my birthday over?
[13:08]And it's like that devastation,
[13:10]paired with the bigger things
[13:12]that she doesn't totally realize.
[13:14]Oh my gosh.
[13:15]And everything says, you know,
[13:17]I want another birthday.
[13:19]Yes.
[13:20]That's a, you realize,
[13:22]I mean, we hear it as saying at this moment in time,
[13:25]is she even gonna have another birthday?
[13:28]I mean, she wanted to, of course,
[13:30]the party, you've got the, you know,
[13:32]but oh my God, when she said that,
[13:34]we nearly all started crying.
[13:36]I mean, her parents and I heard it.
[13:38]It was after, you know, in the great sweep up after a party.
[13:42]And it was quite wanting how children know something.
[13:47]You know, I do think she knew something
[13:51]on some level when she said,
[13:55]I want another birthday.
[13:57]You also used an expression that I had not heard before,
[14:02]a generations miscarriage.
[14:04]Oh, yeah.
[14:06]Talk about that.
[14:08]Well, in the second poem where my granddaughter,
[14:13]you know, I'm waiting for a lesson,
[14:15]she's waiting for me to speak.
[14:17]And I'm wondering,
[14:19]is there gonna be another generation?
[14:21]Will there be other generations?
[14:24]So that this image of another Noah,
[14:28]you know, under this POC Mark blood-pocked covering,
[14:36]it felt like broadly,
[14:37]this is very specifically a miscarriage
[14:41]for the young people who are at the age of reproduction,
[14:47]but it's a historic miscarriage in some way.
[14:53]How did we get here?
[14:55]You know, there are some Israelis who just want more and more land,
[15:00]but most Israelis that I know really want peace and coexistence.
[15:05]I want to believe that Hamas has preempted the voice
[15:12]of Palestinians.
[15:15]Certainly they have suffered terribly.
[15:18]And in my heart of hearts,
[15:21]I don't believe that every Palestinian is out for genocide.
[15:28]They want coexistence.
[15:30]And in fact, many Palestinians within Israel live
[15:33]as full citizens and value that relationship.
[15:39]So this is like a historic miscarriage.
[15:42]How did we get here?
[15:44]Well, I mean, that's what makes you a poet, right?
[15:46]It's the use of words farcely to represent so much more.
[15:50]That going multiple directions.
[15:52]Yes. And then the last part,
[15:54]I wanted to read, you say later,
[15:57]I don't know when life can return.
[15:59]And in this dialogue, 40 years, my friend,
[16:03]our grandchildren's lifetimes, not ours.
[16:06]Is that what you think?
[16:08]I mean, I feel like the Israel that I knew,
[16:13]although I have to say, life springs back,
[16:16]at least in Tel Aviv, which is what I know best.
[16:21]But you have a generation of traumatized people,
[16:26]the children who were exposed to this.
[16:28]How did they recover?
[16:30]How did they ever speak of this?
[16:32]And yet, when you look at the history of our people,
[16:35]you spring back after the show, in amazing ways.
[16:39]And I also want to say the whole
[16:44]Miss Rahe Jewish world, we sometimes don't think highlight
[16:48]the show up, but the Miss Rahe world
[16:51]had their own show up in the early in mid-50s.
[16:57]And somehow we spring back.
[16:59]So maybe it's not 40 years,
[17:02]but it's that sense that just as we as slaves
[17:09]needed to find a new mentality,
[17:13]I guess I'm looking forward to the post-traumatic concept
[17:19]of being Jewish and coexisting.
[17:22]And I think the Miss Rahe Jews and the Mizrahi poetry
[17:27]contemporary Israeli poetry is so important
[17:30]because just as the Ashken Nas,
[17:33]we have a history of living with Christians
[17:36]in good and bad times.
[17:38]They have a history of living with Muslims
[17:42]in good and bad times.
[17:43]And so I think looking a bit to their poetry
[17:47]is also a way, but I very much believe that deep listening,
[17:54]we can, our diplomats hopefully
[17:57]will create some kind of ceasefire,
[17:59]but let's never mistake a ceasefire for peace.
[18:03]There's a lot of person-to-person work.
[18:07]And I think deep listening and poetry is one vehicle
[18:11]into that listening that paves the way
[18:15]for real peace, not just a ceasefire.
[18:18]Well, can you quickly touch on how you are a doctor?
[18:23]Like to me, Dr. Brain is not poet brain, right?
[18:28]It's an analytic, you know, math science brain.
[18:32]And yet here you are so creative.
[18:34]And maybe that is totally wrong of me
[18:36]even say or think.
[18:38]No, no, it's like, you know,
[18:40]it takes a lifetime to master anything really.
[18:44]But I think that I don't really conceive
[18:48]of these polls of my life as different.
[18:52]First of all, I'm a psychiatrist.
[18:54]I'm also a child psychiatrist.
[18:55]So listening and words being my vehicle of hearing,
[19:01]of healing and hearing, I mean, that's been entrenched.
[19:05]So whether I was writing or not writing,
[19:08]I'm listening and I'm trying to communicate.
[19:10]And the child psychiatrist, part of me,
[19:13]keeps writing the foreground how important play is.
[19:17]I play with my adult patients,
[19:19]but poetry, creativity comes out of play
[19:23]and that kind of open space where anything is possible.
[19:28]And in my academic world, fortunately, you know,
[19:33]more in a few hats, my whole life,
[19:37]I was also devoting a good part of each week to teaching.
[19:41]But since five, six years ago,
[19:44]the Columbia Medical School has a free standing department
[19:49]of medical humanities and ethics.
[19:51]And I began to shift my teaching into narrative medicine.
[19:56]And maybe two years ago, three years ago, I,
[20:00]was given a joint appointment as a professor of psychiatry in medical humanities and ethics.
[20:06]So, it's all kind of come together, you know, the big conflict of my youth being English professor
[20:12]and I get to do both. I get to poetry to medical students. I have a course on adolescent
[20:20]development through literature and really using literature to sensitize doctors to adolescents
[20:30]being an adolescent. So, I'm in a fortunate position where it's all come together. It wasn't always
[20:36]that there were stretches of time where I just didn't write, being a doctor, having a young family.
[20:41]I mean, there wasn't a lot of over for a while. Do you feel safe as a Jew at Columbia right now?
[20:49]At the medical school, absolutely. They were far, I was exposed to no disruptions. Occasionally,
[20:57]when I've had to be on the main campus. I think that Columbia has a long way to go. I mean,
[21:05]even the arrest of these students, which is deplorable, I mean, or the process of the arrest,
[21:12]I have to say, is deplorable, Khalil and others. I feel like if Columbia had taken charge of
[21:20]managing its own antisemitism, I think that there's a confusion between freedom of speech
[21:28]and the right for students safety to be protected and for education to be protected.
[21:34]And if Columbia University had put those two concepts first within that, yes, of course,
[21:40]protect free speech, but free speech is not licensed to harm students, is not licensed to disrupt
[21:47]the education that people are paying dearly for. So interestingly, a lot of what Trump
[21:56]has demanded were things recommended by the task, the university task force on antisemitism
[22:03]and had they paid more attention to what the task force had recommended. Perhaps it wouldn't
[22:11]have been in this mess and perhaps these students would not have been plucked off the street
[22:15]in the way that they were. So I think Columbia University has a ways to go in reckoning. And I think
[22:23]when professors put politics first as their prime agenda, we're in a position where these rights
[22:32]are forfeited. Wow. Well, Owen, this book was beautiful. I am really impressed. I appreciate
[22:42]your use of language to describe something that at times feels hard to articulate. So thank you
[22:49]very much. And thanks for chatting with me. Thank you so much for having me. My pleasure. Bye bye. Bye bye.
[22:55]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi, formerly momstone have time to read books.
[23:00]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
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