Kate Baer, HOW ABOUT NOW: Poems

[1:21]Kate Baer: Welcome to Totally Booked Live at the Whitby Hotel. I am so excited to be here today with Kate Bear, New York Times bestselling poet and someone who I have so much respect for and read her sub second. She's just awesome. Anyway, welcome. Thank you, Zibby. It's so lovely to be here. I'm honored. Yay. Kate, okay. How About Now is your new collection. Congratulations. Thank you. You put so much into this collection, so many experiences that you somehow sum up with just a couple lines, and we learned so much about you and your experience and your emotions. Talk a little bit about this collection in particular and just tell everybody about it. Yeah. This is my fourth poetry book.

[2:05]Zibby Owens: Poetry is a funny thing because it's listed in the fiction section, so you can really hide behind that. But at least for me, this book, just like my other books, is extremely personal. I did have to delay its publication a year. It was supposed to come out last year, but even though I've always been a really late bloomer, I got to experience a midlife crisis very early, at the very green age of 39. I went through some pretty serious health issues and had to delay the book, but which ended up setting a stage for a lot of it. Facing my own mortality and kind of coming to terms with a lot of things that you do when you face your own mortality. And also my kids getting older and just my life feeling like it was passing me by so quickly and having this feeling of like, Well, I have to do this now because I don't know how much longer I have. So that was kind of the backdrop for this book. I also think it's playful and has some light hearted parts, too. But that's kind of where the book started. Can you share a little more about your health issues, or are they secret? Well, some of them are still unresolved. Some of them are very common but are never talked about. Like, can you say rectum on this podcast?

[3:19]Kate Baer: We can now. I just said rectum. I

[3:22]Zibby Owens: was experiencing a pelvic floor prolapse that was pretty serious. I was having a bunch of neurological issues that were very unexplained, so much so that eventually they said, I think you need to go to the ALS clinic, which is obviously a very, very scary phrase to hear. There was just a lot of things that were unknown. There still are a lot of things that are unknown. I don't have ALS, I don't think. Just a lot of weird neurological issues. So I spent a whole year kind of spiraling about that and feeling very scared for my health and for I've got four children. So that like I said, that really did influence a lot of the book. Not all of it. With poetry, especially poetry collections, there are some poems you write for ten years or five years or two minutes. It really depends. Some of those had been cooking for a while, but a lot of them were born from that crisis that I went through.

[4:16]Kate Baer: How old are your kids now? I've got a high schooler and a middle schooler and two still in elementary school. Can I read a poem or two? Oh, sure. Is that okay? And then you can hopefully just talk about it a little bit. You have a number of things. Yes, of course, about the health thing, but some more on the superficial end of things. And you talk a lot about body image and weight and all that. There's one called Say Less. I'm smiling for no reason except that I've lost weight. And when I'm feeling very thin, I watch a power rise inside me, snake like and unrepenting, feeding on the passing comment, the look up and look down. Good girls always win, and that's a problem. Another is God giveth and she taketh away. And while I've lost all my reason, what I have is viper's breath. If you're still here and I'm still hungry, this is your fair warning. There's nothing I won't do for your dependent love. Yeah, body

[5:10]Zibby Owens: has been a theme through all my books, and so I'm not surprised that theme has spilled over to How About Now. Because of all the health issues, my body has changed once again. Like most women, it's changed a lot. Like I said, I have four children. And so, yeah, that poem snuck in there. I almost cut it because I knew I'd be asked about it on stage. Sorry. No, I'm happy to. I'm happy to. About to start recording. It's almost like she told me. Yeah. But yeah, I think especially when you live in a bigger body, which I have 90% of my life, I was shopping in the ladies plus size section in fifth grade, I felt and I still feel this way like my body is always a topic of discussion. If you search my name, the first thing that will pop up is Kate Bear Weight Loss Reddit. There's nothing to see, though. So you can look, but there's nothing to see. Yeah, it's just it's been a topic of discussion in my life outside of me since I've been a child, and so that's kind of where that poem came from. Wow.

[6:12]Kate Baer: Okay. There are a few other ones as well, and sorry for that. This one Please. You can ask me anything. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm about to, so I'm glad you said that. Good.

[6:23]Zibby Owens: I already told you about my rectum that's falling out of my body, so truly there's nothing off the table. Well, we're going to the gynecology

[6:30]Kate Baer: intake There form we go. At this Sure, sure. My and the way you've done this, you probably can't see, is it's literally an intake form as if it's in a doctor's office, you've only filled in a couple things

[6:43]Zibby Owens: throughout and then you want us to read those things. And in the ARC, it's actually misprinted, so if you read it, it won't read right. The graphic has been corrected. But yeah, that's a very visual poem, which I've really enjoyed putting into this collection. There's a whole bunch of them. I did a whole book of erasures, but this time I decided to do things like a form and then kind of use that to make sort of an erasure,

[7:08]Kate Baer: the inverse of that, into a poem. Well, this one says, My senior year of college, a man who hated women carried me to my bedroom and engaged with my lifeless body, resulting in sexual assault and human papillomavirus. What are the statute of limitations on anger, on revenge, on how long one man's ego will find its way onto the page?

[7:31]Zibby Owens: -I'm really getting into it. Welcome. It's been ten minutes. -It's been ten minutes. Yeah, he, this person, and this whole story from my college days is also In What Kind of Woman, which is where that last line comes from. The fact that this has once again came up in my writing was so frustrating to me. Like, I can't believe I'm still talking about this. I can't believe I'm giving this guy another page in a book. And yet I kept it in there because I know from so many women what is it, one in four? There's so many of us who are living with those stories that don't go away. It doesn't matter how old you are. And so, yeah, that's where that poem came from. I'm really sorry you went through that. Yeah, thanks. Thank you for putting it in here. Yeah, thank you for dealing with me asking you. No problem. What else can we talk about? I mean,

[8:21]Kate Baer: is your

[8:22]Zibby Owens: book. You put it all in I know. I'm so happy to do it. Yeah. I

[8:26]Kate Baer: I mean, can't really find too many, like, superficial ones. No. Good. Good. That's good. That's, like, the whole point of the book. Yeah. Yeah. Can I read this one? Thought called Before the Guests. Yes. Okay. You smiled, so that's good. Okay. In the end, it's who we loved, how we'd sit out on the patio after it had rained, telling the same stories about the family dog. How, when invited over for a campfire, a round of cards, a late night summer swim, we'd pile in the car, show up empty handed to a house lit up by familiar conversation. Yes. You can build whole kingdoms of picture perfect laundry rooms and remodeled kitchen walls. But when the light comes from every direction, ready to carry you to the great unknown, there is only one thing I'll care to remember. August nights, September mornings, entire seasons spent loving you.

[9:16]Zibby Owens: Oh, there's a nice one in there. The biggest feedback from my editor has been, can you write some nice poems? Maybe someone's people could frame that aren't dragging you back to college or to your pelvic floor prolapse. So I put that one in there for her, but also for myself. That one was born after a total spiral. We were having weekend guests, and I kept saying to my husband, We still have this thirty year old kitchen backsplash. I'm so embarrassed. And he's like, What are you talking about? This the most important thing. And I know a lot of us can resonate with that when you're having guests over and you start looking at everything with that critical eye, when none of that matters. I have to remind myself of that all the time. We're all going to die. I think what matters the most are those late night conversations and the human relationship.

[10:10]Kate Baer: How bad is the backsplash? It's pretty bad.

[10:14]Zibby Owens: It's like brown patterned '90s black backsplash. Yeah,

[10:18]Kate Baer: it's tough. Sorry about that. We'll there. Okay. Maybe one more. Meanwhile, how about that? Is that okay? At the concert, we show our phones our favorite musician. On vacation, we show them the waves, the children playing in the sand. We say, look, phone, and turn it on ourselves. Look at my face. I'm so old and ratty, we say to our phones. Now look at the sunset, a four call a four car pile up, a dog in khaki pants. You must remember this, we say to our phones. Have it when we want it. We will never want it. A gray heron sails across the sky. Look, we say, pulling our phones from our back pockets. You don't wanna miss this phone. It would be a shame if you missed all this. Big bummer. That's another bummer poem.

[11:02]Zibby Owens: But it's never been more timely, I think. Gosh, we're on our phones a lot. I just got off the phone with the school principal two days ago. I actually kind of hung up on him crying because my son gosh, can I talk about this? My son in study hall a man got assassinated a few weeks ago two weeks ago? And I don't want to talk about that, but he saw it in study hall. And I was like, Can you please have the kids put their phones away? And we see a lot that we don't want to see. We're on it a lot, and it's tough. It's tough as a mom. Yeah. That's not what that poem is about, but that's my current that's what is in my head right now about phones is how much it's affecting our kids. Is he okay? I think he's okay. Yeah, yeah. But it's hard. I kind of think that we're going to look back on giving our kids access to social media like we do when we put newborns in the front seat with a bottle of juice. I think that's how we'll look at it. Like, that was pretty silly that we would let children

[12:09]Kate Baer: be on social media. Yeah. Okay. Calling home to get them off right now. My YouTube and Roblox addicted children. Yeah. Okay. I just wanted to read one more. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince. Summer always makes me rethink what I'm reaching for every day. Lighter fabrics, better materials, pieces that just feel good the moment you put them on and look effortless. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high quality essentials. Think breathable linen, soft organic cotton, washable silk, but without the luxury markup. It's that rare balance where everything feels elevated, but still easy. Quince has beautiful everyday pieces like 100% European linen pants, dresses, and tops with styles starting at $32. Their denim is soft and easy to wear. I wear my jean jacket all the time. And their organic cotton sweaters are perfect for layering on cool summer nights. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And it's not just clothing. Quince has really become a destination for elevated essentials across home, kitchen, bedding, and beyond, making it easy to bring a more premium feel into everyday life. In addition to my jean jacket, I recently got a white tank top dress with a beautiful cotton skirt that is absolutely gorgeous, and I can't wait for it to be warm enough so I can wear it every day, but it has been a cool spring. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com/zippy for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q U I N C E Dot Com Slash Zibby for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Quince.com/zibby.

[15:06]Zibby Owens: Can I read one more? Please. Okay. This is called Please Still Get This Book. It's good. It's really great. There are lots of going on.

[15:15]Kate Baer: This is the last one I'll read. It's called Marriage Poem. This is a poem about marriage. It doesn't have any sex in it. I know you might be looking. Instead, we have whole milk, fruit flies, four kids, apologies dressed as turkey sandwiches. At some point in every day, someone must decide what everyone else will eat for dinner. My grandmother said men only want one thing from their wives, but now she's dead and I can't ask her what it was. Among my Google tabs, there is a list of places we should research for vacation. Money is an issue. Children are an issue. A ninety minute bedtime routine is an issue. But back to dinner. Pot roast or salmon steaks? My husband says I have a way of making everything into something. The happiest hours of my life have been alone, watching my family through a window. I love my life except for the noise of it. The thing about dinner is someone has to decide to step out of their own way. Yeah. My husband keeps finding his way on the pages too, much to his chagrin. He reads the book the day it comes out. I hope he likes that one. Oh, no. So he hasn't read any of these? No, no, no. I think he'll like that one. I think he'll like that one too. So what is your process with writing all the poems, figuring out which to put in a collection, the order of the collection? How do you deal with all that? Do you put it all on the floor and rearrange?

[16:34]Zibby Owens: Yeah, do put it out on the floor for sure. Yeah, I think a lot of the lines and the concepts and the imagery come just when I'm living my life. I write it down or I email myself or I put it in my notes app. And then the actual writing part, the hard part, is that schedule. That's my office hours and that's when I'm doing the writing. But the meat of the poems come from everyday life, especially ones like that.

[17:02]Kate Baer: And how do you feel being a poet today?

[17:05]Zibby Owens: I mean, I think that people have a certain image of poets, although that's really changed because of social media. I feel great about it. I mean, poets are as old as language, and so to me, I feel so honored to be recognized as just one in a lineage of so many. But yeah, it's great. I feel like poetry, because of how it's taught in school, it's hard to maybe this is just my own bias. But we do such a disservice to poetry in school. We teach dead old white guys, and it is a snooze fest. I mean, I didn't like poetry either as a child. I mean, I was writing my own poetry about cats and my sister and my parents, but the poetry I learned in school, we weren't reading contemporary poets. But I've met so many incredible teachers since putting out my books who teach not just my work, but other living poets, women. And I do think that is changing. But yeah, back in the nineties, we were learning about dead old white guys. Yeah. It's pretty boring. This is gonna sound like a stupid question, but what makes something a poem versus just a few lines of an essay or

[18:23]Kate Baer: something else? Like, how know it's

[18:26]Zibby Owens: a poem? I think you know when it's a poem. I think the reader knows when it's a poem. There's poetry in everything. People always ask me, What poetry should I read to my children? And I say, Well, most children's books are poetry. The cadence, the rhyme, the imagery, I think poetry is everywhere in children's books, in music, in essays, in fiction, you see it everywhere. I think you just know. It's like when a chord is played and you hear it. You hear the sounds come together, the images come together. I think it's everywhere. In the collection, write about going to the hospital and

[19:08]Kate Baer: having it be a panic attack. Talk

[19:11]Zibby Owens: a little bit about that. Well, never had a panic attack and I never thought I knew what anxiety was, but because I was having all these medical issues, I started to experience anxiety basically for the first time in my life in that full body way. And because parts of my body were literally numb actually some of them still are I would feel this panic come over me and my chest squeezed and I couldn't breathe and I thought, Oh, this is a heart attack. But it was obviously very I didn't tell anyone, I didn't tell my husband. My husband's a physician. He was in the hospital six floors up working. I didn't tell him. I just went by myself. I just cried in the emergency room. I said to the person I was checking in, I said, I think I'm having a heart attack, or maybe I'm just making this up. It wasn't a heart attack. I was making it up, I guess. Deeply humiliating, but ultimately taught me a lot about listening to my body and also just, it's okay if you're thinking that. I think most of us are aware that women experience heart attacks all the time and just ignore it. And so, that's what I had in my head. Yeah, A very humbling experience, but ultimately ended up in the book. But it shouldn't

[20:21]Kate Baer: make you embarrassed. I mean, this happens to so many people. It feels So, that

[20:27]Zibby Owens: you're not making it up. My arm hurt. I was like, I'm having all the signs. It's happening. Driving myself there. Maybe I hope I don't crash. Just a wild time. Yeah. And why did you not want to call anybody? Because I was afraid of being wrong and feeling like I was being dramatic. I was one of those my parents always called me dramatic my whole life. I think a lot of writers, this is something they were called. And so I just kind of was carrying I've been carrying that around my whole life, like, don't be dramatic. Don't make this into something that it's not. And, yeah. Mean,

[21:01]Kate Baer: yeah. Why don't you be so bad about that? -Yeah.

[21:04]Zibby Owens: I mean, nothing. I called my husband eventually from the room. He's like, I'll be right down. Yeah. And was basically like, It's okay. Next time, just tell me and we can walk through it and you can come to the hospital if you need to. So So yeah, it was definitely I have to learn things the hard way. Yeah, I'm 40 and I'm still learning these lessons.

[21:21]Kate Baer: We're all still learning lessons. It's okay. But at least you're sharing your lessons with us. You can give us a little shortcut. It's like, shoot some ladders. Your poems are each a ladder up to

[21:32]Zibby Owens: something we can skip. Yeah. Definitely go to the hospital if your arm hurts and you have a squeeze in your chest. I'm not saying that. Please go. Yeah. Maybe don't drive yourself. Maybe

[21:42]Kate Baer: call someone in case you are right. Yeah, sure. I mean, you never know. Mean, what if okay, whatever. Moving on. When you thought about your kids, because you write about this too, about the notion of if something were wrong, if you had to leave your kids,

[21:58]Zibby Owens: all of that. How are you feeling about that? I think that's a lot of mothers' worst fear, is being apart from their children in any way. And so, yeah, I think that fear, which was born the second my son was born fourteen years ago, has carried into all my work, and especially in a poem like that, where again, was facing that facing my own mortality kind of for the first time and reckoning with what that meant for everybody else. And

[22:29]Kate Baer: you've written four collections of these fabulous essays. You are a star on social media with a gazillion followers. What do you think, when you look at your own work, resonates so much? What do you think is hitting home? When you post a poem, what are the things you're like, This is really gonna get them?

[22:47]Zibby Owens: I don't know if I think that. I think that people love and this is what I love about poetry people love boiled down storytelling. And I think that's, especially during COVID, people were looking for that as my first book came out. So I think that's some of it. It's also just easy to access online. You can't post your short story there. So the platform lends itself to that kind of boiled down storytelling. So I that's why there's been the success there. But yeah, it's honestly the surprise of a lifetime that anyone bought my first book, and I can't believe I still get to do this. It's a huge honor. Well, it's so good. Congratulations.

[23:30]Kate Baer: Thank so much. Thank Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zippy Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.