Speaker 1: Hello and good morning. How's everything going today?
Speaker 2: I'm doing well. Is this Aero Collins?
Speaker 1: Wow, what a beautiful voice you've been gifted sir.
Speaker 3: Oh really, well, you definitely have a lively voice.
Speaker 1: You I think. I mean, maybe it's because we're both
poets and we know how to use our voices in
you know, to to bring things together. You know that connection.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm always looking for a connection, I'd like to think,
I am.
Speaker 1: When when did you discover that you had a way
with words?
Speaker 2: Oh, that's a good away with words. Oh wow, that's
I know what I became interested in words? It was.
Speaker 3: It was in college, that's for sure. Maybe my second semester,
or my freshman year, maybe my sophomore year. Uh, I
I this is an old story now for me, I
had an experience. In the experience, uh drove me into well,
it drove me into with hindsight, into seeking.
Speaker 2: And then I I responded to poetry.
Speaker 3: And it was yeah, and then I became interested in poetry.
Speaker 1: When when you say that you were you were you
were seeking? Is that one of the reasons why you
were a psychoanalyst?
Speaker 3: I think so, yes, because you've lived it. Yeah, say again,
you've lived it. Well, I don't know what the id
is that I'm living. I'd like to think I'm living it,
but yeah, I don't know if I can label the it.
Speaker 1: I love the idea that you or the title of
the of the book, the Long Journey Out, because I mean,
when I picked up the book and I knew that
you were a poet, I'm going, Oh, I can't judge
a book by its cover, but I have a feeling.
I know where this is coming from.
Speaker 2: Oh, and what is the feeling?
Speaker 1: Well, the feeling is is that as as writers and
as poets, and we have to make our words you
know where people are will understand them. We've got to
take a journey itself and that means that we've got
selves in order to communicate one on one. Do you
believe in.
Speaker 3: That come out of ourselves? Of I don't, Well, I'm
not sure what that means.
Speaker 1: Well, let's let's put it this way. There are a
lot of people who are sitting in their bedrooms writing music,
writing poetry, writing books. They never set it free. So therefore,
what you've done by setting this book free, a debut book,
I mean you you have come out of yourself.
Speaker 2: I hear what you're saying.
Speaker 3: I am all for people taking the risk, and it
is a risk right to expose what I think is
a vulnerable part of yourself that's being expressed through your poetry,
your songs or whatnot, or whatever the creative form medium is.
Speaker 2: That's risky.
Speaker 1: Did you create your own style or are you playing
by the rules that teachers taught us way back in
elementary school?
Speaker 3: Well, I was a rebellious sword, so whatever. So if
there were rules, then you could count that I'd like
not follow them.
Speaker 2: But when I got to.
Speaker 3: I eventually went to an MFA program and was introduced
to poets, and I listened to them talk, and I
became interested in more, much more interested in the history
the received his street, I admit, but it is what
it is back then. And I did become interested in words.
I did become interested in in the craft of poetry,
in the in the forms that poetry expressed itself through.
And I you know, I wouldn't have been known about
it had I not gone through that program.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, when you say crafting the poetry, how do
you keep the perfectionist at bay?
Speaker 3: But well, I just have I want to, you know,
feel I'm connected to myself.
Speaker 2: I like to think that, and I just sort.
Speaker 3: Of know when the poem's done, you.
Speaker 2: Know, I work on it, work on it, and then
it's it's done. Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know. I may go back now and see, oh
maybe I could change a word or two, but nothing major.
The basic architecture is there, you know, the.
Speaker 2: Structure is there, the movement is there.
Speaker 3: Oftentimes, you know, with poetry, I don't know where it's going.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but you know that's the fun part about it.
Speaker 2: Yes, isn't it the discovery? Like whoa, I've landed upon
the shores.
Speaker 1: When you speak of being connected, would you say that
writing poetry is your creative meditation.
Speaker 3: I like the phrase creative meditation. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2: It's meditative in a sense that.
Speaker 3: It takes me out of my myself, so to speak.
Speaker 2: And I've become totally.
Speaker 3: Enthralled and engaged with this task of writing a poem.
Speaker 1: There's so much emotion in your poetry. I mean you
feel it. I mean you you can actually just it's
almost like you were sitting with us and you're saying,
by the way, I've got a few things i'd like
to say, and you said it free and I love
the fact that were you thinking about us while you
were writing it?
Speaker 3: I'd like to say I was, I'm just thinking of
the poem.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, when I say the poem.
Speaker 3: I mean the energetic thrust, the organizing principle that I
have to discover that is the poem what you may
be called the feeling or something like that.
Speaker 2: This may sound whish you watch You're wooly headed, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so basically the emotions that I feel are the
interpretation that I get from it.
Speaker 3: Well, we are you to have to tell me what
feeling you get from the poem.
Speaker 2: And we could talk about it.
Speaker 3: But you know, I am touched and it makes me
happy that you If you get a feeling, I think
that's wonderful.
Speaker 1: Well, and what I want to do is I want
to make sure that it's not because I too, am
the poet. And so that's when I start thinking about
the listener. Because I was on the Barnes and Noble
tour for two and a half years and I sat
with more poets, people wanting to write poetry, and one
of the lessons that we did was I had them
go sit in the in the poetry section of the
bookstore and tell me everything that's going on. They would
come back in twenty minutes and say nobody came in,
and it's like, okay, how are we going to get
poetry out there if we can't get people in there
into that section?
Speaker 2: Right, you're right.
Speaker 3: You know I used to love going to you know,
Barnes and Nobles and bookstores and just hanging out in
the poetry section. Yeah, you know, pulling out books, reading
a poem and a poet. For me, either works or
it doesn't, you know. And when I say works, it
touches me. Literally it's a metaphor. But right, my body
gets stirred. I moved by the poem, whatever you call that.
And I would just read poems, go through books and
discover poets that way.
Speaker 1: What is your discipline when it comes to writing those poetry,
because I mean, poets were way before Twitter became cool
because when I called Twitter speak, we only had so
many words we could put in there. The same is
true about poetry. You can only put so many words together.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, there are people who write epic poems,
and I have some poems that are you know, nine
pages long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know it's not made for today's audious. Yeah,
it's very slow build up the.
Speaker 1: Name of the book, The Long Journey Out from Ronald
Lieber will be right back. Hey, thanks for coming back
to my conversation with poets Ronald Lieber. Basically, what is
your discipline? How do how do you keep yourself well,
you know, finely tuned and oiled and and and make
sure that you stay true to what your original plan
is because as authors it is so easy for us
to go in any direction at any time, but you
you stay focused through your poetry.
Speaker 3: Well well, but I am reminded of a Yate's poem
here when you're talking like, od did.
Speaker 2: You bring that up?
Speaker 3: Because I was thinking about this because he has a
poem in which he says, you know, you see the
figure skater and it looks so effortless to the for
the figure skater or a basketball player, effortless, but you
don't see all the hours that went into the uh,
into the practice of the craft. Right, So that this
is something ts Elio has said. So when when the
inspiration does it, you don't fumble with the tools.
Speaker 4: You're versed in it, so you're more literal, and then
the inspiration has less obstacles to move through in order
to find its outward expression.
Speaker 1: Do you have a favorite writing instrument? Are you handwriting
the things out?
Speaker 3: I was told when I was in the program, one
of the instructors, Derek Walcott, you know, took me aside
and he said, do you compose your poems on the
computer the typewriter? And I said yeah, and he said
try writing longhand and I did and it changed.
Speaker 2: Yep. It changed the poetry. Yep, totally. There is more.
Speaker 3: It was more relaxed, and there was an ease.
Speaker 2: I don't know what it did change it though.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I learned from Julia Cameron with the
artist way. Do not go to the computer. You write
that thing out right right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And see my last book was it's a full story,
but it's fifty three different pieces of poetry that made
the story. And I knew while I was doing it
it wasn't going to do anything because people don't really
they're not drawn to poetry like they used to be,
especially if it's if it's telling a full story. But
I mean, so that's why I'm inspired by you having
the courage to step out here saying I know poetry
is big because there's a lot of poetry conventions and
people are renting areas, especially Charlotte, where they're coming out
to read their poetry.
Speaker 3: Yes, and you know I and I'm a firm believer
of reading poetry out loud.
Speaker 2: Nice to hear.
Speaker 3: The poetry because you know, first of all, it slows
it slows me down, and then it allows me to
inhabit the poem, you know, when I can hear it
out loud, I love doing that.
Speaker 2: I used to just stand in the room.
Speaker 3: Read the poets and the poetry that I liked out loud,
to hear it, to hear the cadence, to hear the rhythm,
the intonations or of course those are my interpretations, but
to read it so that it has meaning.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: Is that where I'm just sitting at JACKA and Joe
went up the hell? You know, it's dead to learn
to to try to evoke the poem that yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Have you ever let somebody else read your poetry
out loud? Because I always think about the songwriters when
somebody you know covers their song, it's like, oh, you're
singing that differently than than Paul McCartney.
Speaker 2: Oh that's you know. I have never had that thought.
Speaker 3: Maybe that shows you how self involved I have, or
maybe how poets are. Maybe that's the difference in poetry
and songwriting. I have never thought that is fascinating.
Speaker 1: Just to hear your words with somebody else's inflection.
Speaker 2: Inflection and how they.
Speaker 3: Understand the poem or how they make meaning out of
the poem whatever, you know, because to read a poem
you'll have to have a sense of what it means.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, yeah, yeah. To me, that that's that's
the emotion of it all.
Speaker 3: Right though, right now David Mammot comes to mind because
I remember because I like David Mammot, but he said
something I don't want you to, you know, like method acting,
just say the words.
Speaker 2: So that's a whole one to eighty difference.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, see, that to me is the difference between
a radio person and a podcaster. Where on the radio
was like, hey, here it is four songs in a
row without talk, you know, and you have to you
have to, you know, use your vocals and you have
to become that actor and sell that product, whereas in
a podcast it's like, hey man, what's up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, but it takes something to.
Speaker 3: Hold attention to your own attention for x amount of minutes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, wow, I don't know how you do it.
Speaker 1: I don't either. I just show up every day and
it happens. In fact, you in fact, you even talk
about it in a way that you know, you know.
It's like people are always searching for answers. Sometimes we
just need to just settle down and just accept the
present as the present.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm with you there, Oh am I with you there.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of suffering would see if we
could just be present to the moment. As someone said,
just be present to the moment, and the future will
take care of itself.
Speaker 2: I like, I like that.
Speaker 1: Put that on a T shirt and sport around town
in it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, think about that for a while, because so many people.
Speaker 2: Are oriented to a future. Yeah, that is just that,
a future. It's not here.
Speaker 1: Where can people go to find out more about you,
Ronald and give you some love on this debut book.
Speaker 3: Well, I do have a web Thanks for asking that
I have a website.
Speaker 2: I think you can get there through.
Speaker 3: Ronald liber l I e as in Edward b as
In boy Er dot com, ronaldliber dot com, or Ronald
okuwake liber ok u a ki where I claim my
Japanese heritage in my name,