AUDIO TRANSCRIPT
Poetry Off the Shelf: Please Poem

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: This is Poetry Off the Shelf. I’m Helena de Groot. Today, Please Poem.

When JoAnna Novak was a young teen, she developed a serious eating disorder. But after many years and a lot of hard work, she mostly had it under control. Then she got pregnant. Something about those hormones and her changing body plunged her right back into the old darkness, where she had to fight off the urge to starve herself, and even kill herself.

The only thing that kept her feeling tethered to reality was writing. And so she wrote. For a while, she even wrote a poem a day. And then, she went to Taos for a few weeks in the summer, indulging her obsession with the abstract expressionist painter Agnes Martin, and in a little over two weeks, she wrote a whole first draft of her memoir—about Martin, and about her pregnancy. But the memoir, titled Contradiction Days, won’t come out until 2023, so we didn’t focus on that. What is out in the world right now is her poetry collection, titled, New Life. Speaking of new life, three months after she came back from Taos, she had the baby, a boy, who’s three now. And he actually inspired my first question.

Helena de Groot: So how—okay, so with a toddler in your household, how do you fit writing into your days?

JoAnna Novak: That’s a really good question. I think the first thing is with a lot of help. You know, we have a babysitter who comes every day to help out with childcare. My husband is a really incredible father and is really very involved in everything in my son’s life. And from the time my son was born, my husband was wearing him in a baby wrap for hours a day. You know, so the first couple hours of the day, I could be writing and my husband might be up holding our son sleeping on his chest. But I find that I can’t be as precious about my routines anymore. Like before my son was born, it was really easy to be like, I get up at 4:30 every day or 5:00 every day and I write for two and a half hours. But with a kid I just feel like I go to bed very tired and like, when I start sleeping, I just want to sleep and get rest. And that feels like important to being a good parent. So that’s sort of like the unsexy answer is like, I just find that I have to be less precious about the time when I write. And also by ignoring, like, lots of real responsibilities for work, because I don’t just live with, you know, I’m not economically sustained by my writing. I have to work outside of writing. So, you know, what do people call it, like, quiet quitting sometimes.

Helena de Groot: Yes. Yes, yes, yes.

JoAnna Novak: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. And you know, the other thing that I wanted to know about that, because you write in your memoir, you write about perfection and your relationship to perfection, which has been with you it seems like your entire life. And well, when you have a child, I think that’s kind of common knowledge, you have to like, let that go.

JoAnna Novak: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: So how has that been for you in your writing?

JoAnna Novak: I think that’s a really interesting question. In some ways, I think that letting go of perfection in my writing means writing complete, messy first drafts more often. I think the work that I’ve been sort of happiest with in the three years that I’ve been, you know, parenting is work that I’ve gotten out in like, a very compressed period of time. An essay in a day, a story and a few hours, like, at the end of the day, in my notebook. And sometimes, like, editing has felt really right in that way as well, just having kind of like super laser-focused editing sessions, rather than like, I’ll work on it for a few days, for a couple hours a day. It’s like, maybe I’ll stay up for eight hours and kind of not blink, you know, and be like, really in a piece. Because I think my dream of a writing life once was the sort of Jeffrey Eugenides model, which, as far as I know, is like, he says he goes to an office and writes every day for 8 hours. And if he writes nothing or a bunch, it’s still a good day. And I love that idea. And it just doesn’t work for me anymore, because, you know, I work from home and my son is in the next room. And like, if I come out of my office and he says, want to go come down and sit on the carpet with him and read a story in the middle of the day, like, that’s really important to me to sit down and read a story with him in the middle of the day. Or if he wants to come into my office and run his trains along the edge of the printer,

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

JoAnna Novak: I’m not going to stop him from doing that. It’s just like so lovely. Sometimes much more lovely than what I’m working on. And so, I really, like, embrace and accept those kinds of deviations from, again, the sort of like, ideal that I once had in my mind. And I don’t know what it will be like when he’s older or in school, but for now, he’s just like a kind of joyful—he’s kind of like a joyful sprite in our house. (LAUGHS) And so, like, I welcome him and his disruptions and like the chaos, which is all really lovely. Not to sound too cheesy about it.

Helena de Groot: I mean, it’s so interesting to hear you talk in this way because both your poetry collection, New Life, I mean, your latest poetry collection, as your upcoming memoir, Contradiction Days, they’re written in anticipation of your son’s birth, and they’re written with a lot of trepidation.

JoAnna Novak: Mm-hmm.

Helena de Groot: You know, all the ways in which it will interfere with your artmaking, your writing. And yeah, a lot of ambiguity, you know, like, of course you’re happy and also, you’re filled with dread. And so I’m wondering what it’s like from the vantage point where you are now to read those pages again.

JoAnna Novak: Editing Contradiction Days was really difficult in that regard, because each revision after it was acquired was a total rewrite. And I have to say that by the time I got to the last one, which I think was by far the most substantive, and that’s the draft, you know, that’s really close to the draft you read, like I was, I was putting off that revision for months, because I felt so distant from that fear and trepidation. Because I was so wrong, in some ways, in my fears. And it was really hard to encounter, like, my former self in those pages and see all the ways that she was, all the ways that she was so limited in her conception of like, love and joy and satisfaction and fulfillment in a kind of generative sense. I really didn’t kind of, you know, have any idea that like, it could be positive having a baby, that it would be like, pretty much fine.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

JoAnna Novak: And I will say that like, the original draft of the book, I was sort of all over the place temporarily, and it just ended like as I was leaving Taos. So there was no kind of like perspective. And also like, in the first draft, I still hadn’t had my son, you know, like, I left and there was a whole trimester ahead of me. And a C-section and all that good stuff. So, I’m really happy with the epilogue and the tone that it strikes there.

Helena de Groot: Yeah, it was lovely to read. Speaking of the C-section, I was wondering if we can get to a poem from New Life. It’s the one called, let me see, where did it go? “What Am I Doing Here Tonight?” It’s on page 38.

JoAnna Novak: Okay.

Helena de Groot: And can you set the poem a little bit? You know, like, where is it set? Like, what is the context for this poem?

JoAnna Novak: Sure. So this poem is set in conference room 8 at Cedars-Sinai, where I took a breastfeeding class with my husband.

Helena de Groot: Oh it was breastfeeding. Okay, interesting.

JoAnna Novak: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Okay.

JoAnna Novak: There was a very bizarre—I mean, it really could have been like an interesting personal essay as well, because there was this very like, kind of (LAUGHS) the instructor was a character, in the way of somebody who’s worked on both sets in Hollywood and also has been moonlighting as an lactation consultant at Cedars-Sinai for decades of her life. She was just so antic and like, capering around the room and had just an energy that was so different than the energy that I felt. I felt so insecure and nervous and like, I really hadn’t been doing anything with any other pregnant women when I was pregnant. I mean, I didn’t tell anyone in a workplace environment that I was pregnant. I just was kind of like trying to be as low key about it as possible, you know? And so like, being around people who seemed, like, really excited about the process, I was like, oh my gosh, I think I ended up having kind of like a really bad depressive episode actually. Like, at the class, I kind of remember now, like, freaking out in the hospital bathroom, which is not uncommon for me. Yeah, so anyhow, this poem is set at a lactation class and, you know, scans the room of participants, which was like, pregnant women, often their partners, and then sometimes like mothers, sisters, friends. So, that’s this poem.

Helena de Groot: That’s great. That’s great.

JoAnna Novak: And I’m actually just kind of like, as I’m looking at this poem again, I’m realizing the collection is actually like the art at Cedars-Sinai that like, my husband and I were like, “Wow, they have a lot of art.” Okay.

(READS POEM)

What Am I Doing Here Tonight?

Cruises retain pregnant women and partners in conf. room 8, enticements, education,

pavilion level. Quite a collection, says my husband, but who’s looking at art? The moms

in long dress, lustrous hair. The elegance of this place (dull lighting). On the table

in front of the room, plush placenta, stingray flat. Baby doll and bendy pelvis,

poster of parturient cross-section. Show-and-Tell me: What am I doing here tonight?

What new lie do I buy? All the fun fears! Nametag, snack, water to sozzle some joy.

Mom #1 is excited about everything, absolutely everything. #2, the whole thing! Dad

#2, diapers and wedding veils; another man: home-life, cooking, playing records, books.

Me? O I alphabetize pain, passenger, patient, power, psyche in a split-second—meet

the five Ps, says the nurse. It may seem overwhelming—it is overwhelming!—the first

of many decisions. (What box do I check for unbirth?) Your belly will be swabbed

with orange, but then it’s over in minutes. The skin is cut, the uterus, baby is out in five.

Sutures: uterus, skin: twenty. Clamps to prevent calf clots. Pale yellow paint to sunny

the OR. The catheter, fairy-floss thin. A shot in the back, an IV to swim. Have mumsy

go under? Oh, no, no, no, never! (Why not? Let me go.) Mom #1 believes the surgery

will protect baby’s brain. Another likes control: Zero risk of tearing. One and done. Pain

is second. Bed rest versus ice packs, scars versus snips, vacuum not forceps, emptiness

not gush, the dread or the dread or—de trop—no, the dread, I can’t go on here, Boy.

Helena de Groot: Thank you. I really like the polyphony in this poem. I mean, it’s obvious, of course, when you write, you know, “Mom #1 is excited about everything” and then you kind of voice what she says, there’s the speaker of the poem, of course. “Me? O I alphabetize pain, passenger, patient, power, psyche in a split-second.” And then cuts in, you know, the nurse: “meet / the five Ps, says the nurse. It may seem overwhelming—it is overwhelming!” You know, on and on. But there are also things where it’s like a little less obvious I think when you’re listening to it, there are these parentheses. So, you know, speaking about anesthesia during the C-section, I guess. Right?

JoAnna Novak: I think it was lactation for C-section.

Helena de Groot: Okay. Okay.

JoAnna Novak: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: So there’s that line, “Have mumsy // go under? Oh, no, no, no, never!” in that kind of infantilizing, upbeat tone that apparently people take on when talking to mothers-to-be, who knows why. And then in parentheses, you write like, “Have mumsy go under. Oh, no, no, no, never! (Why not? Let me go.)”

JoAnna Novak: Hm.

Helena de Groot: As a writer, I’m so interested in how did the language surrounding motherhood and education around that, how did that language strike you and what kind of response did that provoke in you?

JoAnna Novak: Well, first, I think that whenever I’m in a kind of like, medical institutional setting, I just like, can’t help feeling like Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are just sort of like skipping around in my brain and kind of creating this, like, sort of haughty, pissy register. (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

JoAnna Novak: Yeah, it’s just the product of having read them both when I was very young and in like a lot of mental health care situations and really having internalized their poetic voices. So, there’s that. But you know, the kind of rhetoric used to address pregnant women is infantilizing. I don’t think it’s like necessarily like, a sinister infantilizing, but I think it’s kind of like trying to make this really overwhelming process digestible. Like something mnemonic, like the five P’s or whatever. And in some ways, the kind of like, perky and like, kindergarten language that gets associated with pregnancy really made me feel very possessive of my own what felt like a really different experience of that time. It sort of like made me burrow into my own, like, subjectivity. And because I probably felt like sort of so insecure in my ambivalence and, you know, body changes, identity changes, etcetera, I think that sort of led me to feel really like, kind of angry at people who felt like, happy and just sort of like it was just an easy thing to accept and feel good about. You know, like an easy thing to be happy about. And certainly, like in this situation, like this conference room where there are snacks laid out and people are just like getting up and getting water and like bags of muffins, like it was like, no big deal. I’m like, how are you not freaking out about that right now? And like, I don’t want to be demeaning to other people and other people’s experience of pregnancy, like, at all.

Helena de Groot: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. But I don’t, I don’t hear that, if that’s reassuring at all.

JoAnna Novak: Okay.

Helena de Groot: Like, I don’t hear that you’re dissing them.

JoAnna Novak: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: I just hear that, well, your experience is different from what those women are going through.

JoAnna Novak: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: But there is no place for your experience in that kind of context.

JoAnna Novak: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Is what I’m hearing.

JoAnna Novak: Yeah. Also though, like, I think I’m always sort of like in fiction writer mode, even if I’m writing poetry, even if I’m writing nonfiction. And like something that’s helpful to me in getting outside of the limitedness of my own feeling, and in this case, like what I remember as a very emotional reaction to attending this class is like, looking around. Like, those kinds of details and concrete objects really like, anchor me in the world. And so there’s like all this data from the experience that really matters to me, like the props, the nametag and the water, and the snacks, and like, the hair and the, the stuffed baby doll and like the pelvis that people had to wear. And I think there really was like a plush placenta.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

JoAnna Novak: Like a stuffed placenta that this like, really funny nurse held out and was kind of like bopping around the room. Like, so, I love those details. And one of my sort of guiding principles as a writer is Nabokov’s idea of caressing the divine detail, you know? And I think like, in the face of a lot of, you know, turmoil or turbulence or ambivalence or confusion, like, the divine detail is there for me.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: So the word “island” comes up again and again and again throughout your collection, New Life. And so I’m wondering, can you tell me a little bit about, yeah, that word and the fact that the image of an island was so much on your mind during the writing of this book, which is during your pregnancy?

JoAnna Novak: Yeah. So it is just that for actually, for like all three books of poetry and then like, even the fourth that I have that’s coming out in a couple years, I always think of a kind of like, place. So like in Noirmania, there’s this sort of like bleak French countryside death march, and with Abeyance, North America, like it’s, that book is of the California Desert. And so like New Life is very much this kind of like generalized island scape. And the first poem in this, that I wrote in this book is actually the title poem “New Life,” which I wrote after watching this movie, Castaway. Not the story of Tom Hanks and volley ball Wilson,

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

JoAnna Novak: but this story about, if I get it correctly, an English man who puts an ad in the personal section and asks for like, a companion to go live with him on a remote island and like, forge a, like, island existence for, I don’t remember, three months or six months. And it’s a true story, and then it was made into a movie in the ’80s.

Helena de Groot: Uh-huh.

JoAnna Novak: And I remember watching this movie where this kind of young woman accompanies this, eccentric man to some place off the coast of New Zealand. I don’t remember now. But like, there aren’t really towns or like, infrastructure on this island. They’re just going to go and like, set up camp and it’s not going to be good.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

JoAnna Novak: And there’s something about watching that movie when I was pregnant that made me really, it really hit for me, this kind of feeling of like, being sent away to this place where I had to, like, figure out how to, like, redo everything. You know, like the most basic things, like getting water suddenly becomes different or washing yourself becomes different. And I really like, this is a little overdramatic. Like, I really had a very simple pregnancy outside of the mental health issues I experienced. It didn’t have any complications, but it was such a mental upheaval for me that it felt like I had been cast away to this other place.

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

JoAnna Novak: And so, yeah, thinking about islands and the kind of like, resorts and vacations and getaways and this kind of like romantic, sentimental view of islands was like a really nice reprieve from some of what I was feeling in terms of being islanded emotionally. And I also just kind of wanted, like, I wanted the book and the poems to feel a little bit like what is the term for this? Like a domestic horror or like a psychological horror film.

Helena de Groot: Mm-hmm.

JoAnna Novak: In that sort of like Shutter Island way where you’re like, “What’s going on here? Like, what’s real, what’s not?” And I mean, it’s not, the book’s not quite as dark as that, but I liked that idea of the book having a kind of landscape.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. I mean, it is definitely at times exuberant and at times there’s this dark edge to it, like almost nightmarish. So I think, yeah, you hit a lot of different notes in your collection. So I think that definitely came through. Also, as you were talking about your pregnancy being in the physical sense, uncomplicated, but mentally not so, you choose how much or what you want to say, but what, what did you struggle with the most?

JoAnna Novak: So, I found that during my first trimester I experienced the worst depression of probably my adult life. The only depression that rivaled it came after going off antidepressants in high school when there’s kind of often that really intense plummet. But I hadn’t had a period like that in almost 20 years. And I had this really, yeah, just a furious depression that would hit me often and without warning, and was exacerbated by the sense that I should be like in a state of unparalleled joy. Because I had been trying to get pregnant. And so it wasn’t like an accident, and suddenly I was grappling with, “Oh, no, this was, this wasn’t in the cards.” Like it was the hope. I so wanted to be happy. And that’s sometimes the worst thing is when you really want to be happy and your mind or your brain chemistry just like, will not allow it. And I think a big part of it, looking back, has to do with the kind of intense change in like, physical activity that felt safe. So I’m a runner, and the first doctor I saw told me I shouldn’t be running. And like many years later, a different doctor was like, “No, you could have been running your whole pregnancy. Like, you would’ve been fine.” But I was really afraid that, like, if I ran, something would happen. And so I stopped running. And running is really critical to me kind of keeping in balance, I suppose, I think. I also just felt like really confused with how to handle food as a pregnant person. So like, yeah, I have had an eating disorder since I was an adolescent, and by the time I got pregnant, I really felt like I was not necessarily at the point of saying like, I’m in recovery, because I’ve always felt really anxious or not quite comfortable with that idea. But I really felt like, I’m kind of—like this is not an issue. And then suddenly, like, I was pregnant and I was like, just really thrown off, like, do I eat everything I want? It’s not like I was suddenly ravenous or anything, but I just didn’t know, like, “Am I supposed to get, like, super health conscious right now or like, super relaxed right now? And like, how will I feel if I get super relaxed right now or if I get super health conscious right now, is that going to trigger something? I just felt really like overwhelmed by the ways, by the choices I had about, like, food and how they would affect my body. And suddenly, not only my body, but the baby’s body as well and the baby’s development. And so I got really like, sort of really missing restrictive eating, which hadn’t really been a part of my life for years. But I was just like sort of romanticizing that time and that kind of like, ability to deny myself, because suddenly that seemed like the absolute wrong thing to do. And yeah, that compounded with the depression just made the first trimester really, really challenging. And I think at the worst parts of those months I was just experiencing really intrusive suicidal ideation. And panic, anger, confusion, just like, so intense. They were really, like, capsizing me. And I do think that like, a good amount of it was hormonal. I know that people typically have like kind of easier second trimesters in a lot of ways, and that was true for me in terms of mental health issues. And at the same time, I also had gotten to a place where things were so bad and so disruptive that I really started making a very concerted effort to do things that would like, keep me in the best mental health state possible. And those things are like reading, writing, and doing whatever exercise my doctor said was okay as frequently as possible, because it just made me feel like I’m still connected to my body for its own utility and not just the purpose of carrying the baby.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. No, I think that makes a lot of sense. I mean, especially with any kind of mental health struggle, whether it’s addiction or depression or eating disorder, when you’re getting better, yeah, you establish healthy habits. And so I can imagine that to have those habits kind of thrown upside down because all of a sudden, you know, like your body is changing so rapidly and your needs are changing. And yeah, and it’s hard to know what you need and what you can do. I can imagine that having those habits taken away from you would send you reeling.

JoAnna Novak: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: There are a few poems that I was thinking we could read.

JoAnna Novak: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: I’m just trying to see, yeah, which one I think would follow nicely out of what we’re talking about.

JoAnna Novak: Yeah. And I have Abeyance here, too, if like, it makes sense to go there, but otherwise maybe we’re like, maybe we’re really in motherhood and not

Helena de Groot: Yeah, I think so. By the way, gorgeous title. I need to tell you that?

JoAnna Novak: Thank you.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

JoAnna Novak: Do you want to hear a funny story about that title?

Helena de Groot: Yes, please.

JoAnna Novak: It’s related to what we’re talking about, in a way. So when I, before I started writing that book, I was in this kind of, like, really agonized state about an emotional issue, like a kind of personal, emotional issue in life. And I guess once again, I was feeling just like, a lot of despair. And I actually was, like, too upset to drive home from work that day. And like, I couldn’t stop crying, was listening to music, it was just like, one of those times when you’re in a car and you shouldn’t be driving.

Helena de Groot: Yeah.

JoAnna Novak: You know, and so I pulled over into the parking lot of Whole Foods in Santa Monica. And I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t know who to call. And like, I felt like I couldn’t call any of my friends or my family or my husband. And so I called a suicide hotline. I’ve always called hotlines because it just always has felt like a sort of safe place to me. I’ve called eating disorder hotlines and a suicide hotline, and anyhow, but I hadn’t done it in years, probably like 15 years or 10 years or something. And I started talking to this really lovely, really lovely person who identified himself as Chiuan. And he was listening to me and just kind of there. And, you know, after I’d cried myself out, he started kind of restating what I’d said. And then he said, “You’re in abeyance” in this kind of calm, really beautiful way. And then he talked about this idea of being in abeyance and being kind of suspended and being caught between two things or just in a place of indecision or a holding. And I (LAUGHING) kind of fell in love with his voice at that moment and that word, because it was just like a snap of cold water, but like, not stinging at all and just like, actually, really, like it was this sudden loveliness of language in the throes of, like, a really intense emotional experience.

Helena de Groot: Yes.

JoAnna Novak: And it was, the title came to me like a day later. I was like, “Abeyance, Abeyance, Abeyance, North America.”

Helena de Groot: Wow.

JoAnna Novak: Because it’s just such a beautiful word. And I had never heard it before.

Helena de Groot: Oh, you hadn’t either? Okay, I feel a lot better.

JoAnna Novak: I hadn’t! And it’s not a word that I think you would usually hear from somebody on a crisis line. It’s like a legal word, and it’s so much more beautiful than most legalese.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about what abeyance actually means?

JoAnna Novak: Yeah. So abeyance legally is like when something is without an owner or it’s an unclaimed object. But more generally, the word means in a state of suspension. And I think there’s just something about the Y in the middle of that word that kind of makes you really feel like that state of suspension is like a rocking kind of like, hammocked place. There’s just something about the word that makes you really feel like in this, like, yeah, state of sway.

Helena de Groot: It is gorgeous. And I love also, like, the kind of writerly grace that can come from no matter how dire the situation that like, a beautiful word can snap you out of it, you know?

JoAnna Novak: I know.

Helena de Groot: It’s beautiful.

JoAnna Novak: Yeah, yeah.

Helena de Groot: Do you want to read “Everything and fireworks”? It’s on page 67.

JoAnna Novak: Yeah, I think I do.

Helena de Groot: And again, if you want to say something about it, you can just launch into it if you like, but if you want to introduce it somehow, feel free.

JoAnna Novak: Yeah. Well, so when I was writing, well like, once I realized I’m writing a poem a day called “New Life,” because all of these were originally titled “New Life,” anything that stuck in my mind from the day that felt related to this idea of a new life in terms of motherhood, pregnancy, being a pregnant body, felt like potential material. And this poem really was written after I, I think I was at my parents’ house and I went to Mariano’s, which is the local grocery store. And there were big signs in the window for Mother’s Day flowers for sale. So that’s referenced explicitly in the poem.

(READS POEM)

Everything and fireworks

the night before Mother’s Day,

a team of woozy tulips

2 doz/$20,

hours parked

in the driveway,

jigger of vertigo,

jiff in the jug

I am jealous

of you

in the aisle,

aleatory, some

retail clock—

nothing happened

in the grocery storm,

aglow with nerves

and nectar, cards,

carbohydrates:

cast off this

convalescence

and cure my conscience

—paradise

so cumbersome

and worming,

everything overdosed,

overdue. Moonlight

tussive and diamond:

I’ve learned what I have

to do is a sentence;

what I get to do

is a gift.

Helena de Groot: Thank you. Yeah. I really love this poem. And you know, I love throughout your collection, the pleasure that you take in language is so obvious: “woozy tulips,” “jigger of vertigo,” “jiff in the jug,” and then also like, “grocery storm,” which I think is so funny. And I’m curious about, okay, because you write at the end, “I’ve learned what I have to do is a sentence,” which of course can be interpreted as two different things. “What I get to do / is a gift.” And so I’m wondering, given that writing and language has throughout this process, you know, of you struggling with, be it mental health, be it the anticipation of motherhood, with writing and language, kind of as an anchor, I’m wondering how you give that gift now to your son.

JoAnna Novak: Yeah. Thank you for that question. I mean it’s a really, that’s a gift of a question. Like I, I don’t want to, like, come off as like a humble, bragging mom.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

JoAnna Novak: But my son and I have a lot of fun playing with language together. I don’t even know where to begin. Like, well, my son really likes spelling. “Yield” is his favorite thing. The yield sign is his favorite thing. So he likes spelling y-i-e-l-d, but he likes spelling a lot of things. Like, his favorite word for some reason is “quiet,” which he

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS) That’s not an easy one to spell.

JoAnna Novak: No, it’s not. And he for some reason says quiet, qui-let. And so like, he really just like kind of likes thinking about spelling, which is very sweet to me for a three-year-old.

Helena de Groot: Yes.

JoAnna Novak: It’s not like something that we engineered,

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

JoAnna Novak: it’s just like, you know, walking around, you know, like, seeing a sign and kind of like him getting interested in the letters on it. So, that’s like one thing. I think the other thing is like, it’s harder now because he’s reading longer books, but for a while I had like, a dozen board books memorized so that if he kind of got upset, like maybe during a diaper change, I’d be like, “Do you want to hear Madeline?” And then he’d say, “Please, Madeline.” And I would just recite it. And now, like, he recites books himself. And the other the other day, he like, woke up in the middle of the night—it was like the night of Halloween, so maybe it was a weird sleep or something after trick-or-treating. But he woke up in the middle of the night, it was like 2:00 in the morning, and we happened to be traveling. So he was in the same room as like me and my husband. And my husband and I were both awake. And we heard him say, “Arthur Writes a Story. By Marc Brown. For Phyllis Wonder.” And like, he just proceeded to like, you know, from title to author to dedication, like, right on through. And my husband was like, “He’s telling himself a story and putting himself back to bed.” And so like, that’s just kind of like one of the activities in our household is reading a lot. And like he’s very, he’s got a really good memory for language and story.

Helena de Groot: Wow.

JoAnna Novak: Like, I always just think it’s delight—I try to always just think it’s delightful, which it kind of is.

Helena de Groot: It really is. I mean, it’s not wholly surprising if you have two writers for parents, but still. (LAUGHS)

JoAnna Novak: Right, yeah, he plays with cars and trains and things like that, too. But yeah, he loves kind of like, he loves language play. And the other really funny thing is like, the other month ago I had, I got an issue of the latest issue of the Threepenny Review in the mail, and I was like, at the breakfast table with him just kind of like, “Look at this picture, look at this picture.” And there’s a really, there’s a short Charles Simic poem called “Black Out” in there, four Lines. And I was like, “You want to hear a poem?” And he said, “Please poem.” So I read it to him. And then like, immediately afterwards he was like, “Poem? Poem?” And ever since then, he’s been like asking, he’ll just say randomly, like, “Poem?” And I’ll recite it. And then at this point, it’s like a kind of, you know, poor man’s version of the poem,

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

JoAnna Novak: even though it was only like 12 words, I still know I’m getting parts of it wrong. But we get to the end, which is like a father on the floor searching for a black cat. And then my son says, “The end.” So that’s the only poem he’ll hear. If I try to, like, read him anything else, he’s like, “No,” or we have like, you know, endless New Yorkers around and I’m like, “Look at The New Yorker.” Like, I’m trying to get him to, he’s like, “No New Yorker,” but that’s okay.

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

JoAnna Novak: Yeah.

Helena de Groot: Can I ask you to recite the poem as good as you can get it? And then we can get to the real one, if you like.

JoAnna Novak: Yeah. Okay. Okay. Blackout. Now I’m in Mom voice.

Blackout

by Charles Simic

Mother is knitting a sweater for you

No, wait let me try again.

Mother is knitting a sweater sitting in the dark. Father is on all fours, searching for a black cat. The end.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: Do you want to check real quick to see if you got it wrong in ways or?

JoAnna Novak: I don’t trust it to be—ah, here it is, okay.

(READS “Blackout by Charles Simic)

Mother is knitting for me

A sweater in the dark.

Father is on all fours

Searching for a black cat.

Helena de Groot: I love it. I hope that your new, new collection not, you know, not the one that you’ve already written for ’24 or ’25, but the one after that, will at least be called Please Poem.

JoAnna Novak: (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: (LAUGHS)

JoAnna Novak: I know. It’s so sweet.

Helena de Groot: It’s amazing.

JoAnna Novak: Yeah. And he’s kind of been like that sweet his whole childhood. I have a friend who was like, you know, you dealt with so much during your pregnancy, and it’s like, there was like, this is the gift of it is like, you’ve had just like the easiest, sweetest baby, so.

Helena de Groot: I know. I’m really, really, really happy for you.

JoAnna Novak: So I hope that wasn’t too gushy.

Helena de Groot: I love gushy! Come on, we can do gushy, right?

JoAnna Novak: Okay, good.

Helena de Groot: JoAnna Novak is the author of three poetry collections, New Life; Abeyance, North America; and Noirmania. She’s also written a novel, I Must Have You, a short story collection, Meaningful Work, which won the 2020 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest, and essays published in, among others, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times, and The Atlantic. Her memoir, Contradiction Days: An Artist on the Verge of Motherhood, will come out sometime in 2023. JoAnna Novak is cofounder of the literary journal and chapbook publisher, Tammy.

To find out more, check out the Poetry Foundation website. The music in this episode is by Todd Sickafoose and Eric van der Westen. I’m Helena de Groot and this was Poetry Off the Shelf. Thank you for listening.

(MUSIC FADES OUT)