Flint’s Coney Island Legacy: The Immigrant Story Behind a Michigan Icon

Few Flint residents know that one of the city’s most beloved traditions began with immigrants from a tiny mountain village in North Macedonia.

In this episode of Radio Free Flint, host Arthur Busch welcomes Karen Paul Holmes, daughter of Carl Paul, co-founder of Angelo’s Coney Island—the restaurant that helped define Flint’s working-class culture for decades.

Carl Paul came to America through Ellis Island from Bouf, Macedonia, near the border with Greece. Alongside his partner Angelo Nikoloff, he built a local landmark where factory workers, families, and students gathered for the now-legendary Flint-style Coney dog.

Karen reflects on her family’s journey—from her father’s long days behind the grill to her teenage summers waitressing at Angelo’s. Through her poetry, she brings to life the spirit of perseverance, gratitude, and belonging that defines the immigrant story.

She reads three deeply personal poems:

• A warm portrait of her father returning home after long days at the restaurant
• A tribute to his departure from Bouf, Macedonia, in search of the American dream
• A lyrical meditation on Michigan’s lakes, cherry trees, and her father’s love for his adopted home

Karen’s second poetry collection, No Such Thing as Distance (Terrapin Books, 2018), even includes a near-recipe for Flint-style Coney sauce. Her poems have been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac and by former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith on The Slowdown podcast.

Her debut book, Untying the Knot (Aldrich Press, 2014), explores loss, love, and healing. Holmes’s work appears in over 100 literary journals and anthologies, and she was named Best Emerging Poet by Stay Thirsty Media.

🎧 Listen now to explore Flint’s immigrant heritage, the poetry of place, and the story of how a humble Coney Island became part of Michigan’s cultural DNA.

🔗 Links & References

• Karen Paul Holmes — Official Website
  
  
• No Such Thing as Distance — Terrapin Books
  
  
• The Writer’s Almanac — Episode Archive
  
  
• The Slowdown Podcast — Episode featuring Ka

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Transcript

Introduction: Karen Paul Holmes, Author and Poet

SPEAKER_01 0:14

We're here on Radio Free Flint. Thanks for joining us. This is Arthur Bush, your host. Today I have an exciting guest, Karen Paul Holmes, who is a Flint native. She's a poet, amongst other things. She grew up in Flint. Hopefully, she'll tell us about her experiences in our city. As well as tell us about your writing and the work that you're doing, Karen. Welcome.

SPEAKER_03 0:38

Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Now, Karen, you have actually written a poem about Angelos.

Poetry Reading: Daddy Comes Home from Angelo’s Coney Island, Flint, Michigan

SPEAKER_03 0:44

Mm-hmm. About my dad, my dad coming home from work. Yeah, you know, I really need to write a poem about uh waitressing there. I haven't done that yet. I sort of have that one in my head. But yeah, this is my uh my second book, No Such Thing as Distance. But this is my second collection, and it's called No Such Thing as Distance because of these distances traveled from my father coming and my mother coming from Australia, and uh then you know, us being sort of dispersed, the kids sort of being dispersed, and um just that whole idea of dispersed, meaning that you you all live in different cities. Anyway, uh that sort of idea of distance metaphorically and literally.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Why don't you read that poem for us?

SPEAKER_03 1:27

Okay, good. So this is called Daddy Comes Home from Angelo's Coney Island, Flint, Michigan. My sister reaches into her suitcase for the chili dog sauce, a gift to me more rare than a 59 Buick. Today in Atlanta, it's Michigan weather, cold and dull, darkening at dinner time, like when Daddy would arrive from work rushing snow off his tweed coat. Once he brought us leftovers from the jukebox in the stash of 45s, shiny as our patent leather shoes. We found love potion number nine, his mustard stained white shirt always reeked of onions, spiked with cigarette smoke, grease, French fries. When he took off his sweaty shoes, Pico, our chihuahua, rubbed her body crazily against him, then against his socks with their old potato odor. We love the food smells at Angela's, but not the mishmash Daddy wore home. Even in his mustache and the sticky sheen of his forehead as he kneeled to our level. When mom handed him his cold coke, he passed it around to each kid, though five sips nearly drained the six-ounce bottle.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Now, one thing I don't want to miss is you're also a published author. You published two books. The one book was was no such thing as distinct book, and this and the other book was Untying the Knot. Tying the knot, okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:56

No, untying the knot.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Untying the knot, yeah. That doesn't seem like a very good experience. I was a Boy Scout once at Freeman School, and we learned how to tie knots, and I came home. I was so excited, showed my mom, and I started tying curtains. She said, Well, here, this might work better than you messing up our house. Well, let's go to the hardware store and get some rope and to practice. Tying the knot, that was almost um well.

SPEAKER_03 3:21

In that poem, I actually talk about Boy Scout knots, and I was excited as a Girl Scout to learn knots too.

Growing up in Flint in a Macedonian Family

SPEAKER_01 3:28

You get a merit badge actually for learning how to do the right ones. And some of them I still can do. Karen, you're from Flint. Tell us about your history with Flint.

SPEAKER_03 3:41

Um, our address was Davison at the point, but it was really, we weren't really in Davison. We were really in Flint. And I went to Flint Bentley, which is now um Burton, but it was never Burton back. I think it was just Burton Township back. I've I've mentioned to you before that my father was, along with Angelo Nikoloff, was uh the original owner of Angelo's Coney Island. That tied the family back into the downtown area. And, you know, I remember going and having my mother drop us off to get a hot dog and then hopping on the bus to go to uh was it the Capitol Theater or the Palace Theater? There were two of them to see a movie, and that was always such a big deal. Shopping at Smith Bridgeman's uh for our school close every year. So uh, you know, have a lot of memories of downtown Flint.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

And your family having a connection to Angelo's Coney Island, which is really was quite an institution in the Flint area. You also, I think, mentioned to me before we got started that you work there.

SPEAKER_03 4:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

What was it like to work in that zoo?

SPEAKER_03 4:48

I always call it the trial by fire, you know, especially for your first job. And uh uh, I don't know, actually, it may not have been my first job because I was a cashier uh at a place for a while, but waitressing there, um, and I did not get any special treatment as the owner's daughter. We worked hard. And, you know, it was usually summers. I'm not sure if I worked weekends when I was in school or not, but I worked, I think, two summers when I was still in high school. And man, you know, at lunch, the uh crowds from AC and other factories, they would just they'd be lining the aisles. And if you remember Angelo's, it was kind of long and skinny. And so to get anywhere, you had to go down that central aisle. And you'd be carrying, you know, how the waitresses would carry hot dogs and plates of food up their arms. I learned to do that, you'd be navigating through this crowd, and people would be saying, waitress, waitress. Uh, and it was just really hard. And I remember uh one Saturday morning, the um the breakfast crowd was really, really heavy on a Saturday morning. And I had this big table in the back. There was, I think there was only really one big round table, probably six or eight people sitting on it, and they all ordered different kinds of eggs. And it was really hard to get egg orders out of the kitchen on a Saturday when they were busy. So I finally get them. I had this huge tray, I'm carrying them all. It was like my second or third day of work, and I dropped the tray just before I got to the table.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

Oh no.

SPEAKER_03 6:17

And I just went in the back and cried and cried, and people were like, you know, you gotta get back on that horse, you know, get back out there.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

When I was growing up and I went into that crazy place, people were screaming all the time. I couldn't understand how that not get mixed up. I mean, how do they how do they hear all those instructions?

SPEAKER_03 6:38

Those orders, it's so much. Do you remember Saturday Night Live where they would do that? Hamburger, hamburger, hamburger. It was like that. I mean, we'd shout out the orders. You had to learn how to do that. You had to learn the lingo, like one up was a hot dog, and one up without was a hot dog without onions. I don't know, I really don't know how the people at the grill kept those straight, but somehow they did. I mean, they rarely messed up orders. There wasn't an animosity that I felt between the waitresses and the people on the grill because everybody was just working so hard and hustling, and you know, there weren't a lot of mistakes made that I remember.

The Famous Angelo's Recipe

SPEAKER_01 7:14

There's a lot of secrets in that business, and one of those is the recipe, which seems to have come unlocked here in in more modern times, is how I've I met you, was through the the podcast about the uh the the book that was written by Dave Lizke about the Flint Coney Island.

SPEAKER_02 7:32

Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

He, of course, claims to have a recipe. And what I learned from it was that each restaurant had its own recipe, pretty much. They had their own. I maybe it's like a painter, they all have different styles, different colors they like. Is that pretty much the way it is? Or does Angelo's obviously everybody calls it Angelo's, even if it's not really an Angelos thing, just it's kind of become sort of generic with what a Coney Island is in Flint. Is that true?

SPEAKER_03 8:00

You know, I mean, we growing up, we only really ate at Angelo's. So um I didn't have a basis of comparison, you know, as the time went by and you know, Angelo's was either between owners or didn't it didn't taste quite the same, or although before it closed, I think I think it did taste the same as what I remember. But we would go to some of the other ones. In fact, my sisters just just the other day went to Starlight and they said the coneys were really good. Yeah, I think people, you know, just like any chef, they probably, you know, put a little of this, a little of that. But I think probably most of them, most of the really authentic ones, use that Abbott's uh Coney sauce as a base or the Coney meat as a base. So that's you know, that's what I use when I make them. And I think that I mimic the taste pretty well as I remember it.

Poetry Reading By Karen Paul Holmes My Father: Man with Three Names

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Now you wrote a poem about your dad. Um, that's different than the poem about Angelo's, I guess. I'm not sure. I think that's what it was. Why don't you share that with us? I thought it was a good poem.

SPEAKER_03 9:06

Okay, that's great. Yeah, this is going back to the uh, you know, the immigration story, and then it goes into some of the traditions of the Orthodox Church. So um it's called To My Father, Man with Three Names. Greece took your village of Buff in 1912, forced Macedonians to speak Greek to change their names, yours from Konstantin Papazov to Costa Papas. You left for the New World as a teenager with your father, but not your mother, never saw her again until someone sent a picture of her in a coffin. In 207, Ellis Island declared you Carl Paul. Your people clustered in Michigan, formed Orthodox churches. We celebrated name days. May your name last forever. And on Easter, dyed eggs red for his blood, shouted, Christos was Christ! Christ is risen. You walked me to that gilded altar. I took my husband's name, practiced my new signature over and over. But Dad, I want you to know your granddaughter embraces her one quarter you, now goes by Katya instead of Catherine. Remember Father Raphael baptizing a new servant of God, tiny and naked, anointed with oil, immersed in the font, she came up laughing. Before she matured, we buried you. Once again, Constantine held candles for you, sang Vesnaya, memory eternal, incense rising. We still make Quiche like Zelnik, still dance the Macedonia and Pyadushko at church picnics with eight to eighty year olds. Katya and I feel the Balkan rhythms in our blood. When the clarinet wails, we know the tempo is about to double.

The founding of Angelo's Coney Island

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Excellent.

SPEAKER_03 11:00

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Very good. So, what's the story about how Angelos got started? What's the backstory on that?

SPEAKER_03 11:07

Well, um, you know, I know that my father came to this country in 1930. He was born in Macedonia. Well, it was Greece at the time, but the Macedonians still called it Macedonia. He was born in 1911, so he came when he was 19 with his father. And I know he lived in Ann Arbor for a while. He was trained as a tailor, but at some point he came to Flint and he worked at the Flint Coney Island, which I think, if I'm remembering correctly from Dave's book, and if I remember my history correctly, I think that was really the first one started by Simeon Branhoff. And he's a relative, these Branoffs and Browns, and they're all relatives. My father's name was uh Papazoff before he came to Ellis Island and changed it to Carl Paul. His name was Konstantin Papazoff. So the Macedonians all knew each other, and you know, they congregated in Flint and some of the other cities nearby. I don't know exactly the story of Angelo wanting to start the restaurant, but sort of what I've heard, and you know, I could be really wrong, so I wouldn't repeat this, but um, that Angelo had this idea, and then my father, my father was a really good businessman. So, not to say Angelo wasn't, but I think my father was the one who really um had the business sense, you know, how one person is more creative and one person is more business oriented. I think that my father brought that to the table. So he and Angelo um started this, and the book even talks about what year I can't even remember what year it was, actually. Uh it was after, I think it was after the war because he had met my mother stationed in Australia when he was in the new US Navy, and she came after the war and they got married. And at that point, he was working at a place, I think it was called the Lincoln Dairy Bar. Does that sound familiar to you at all?

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Well, there was there was home, uh home, uh the home dairy was downtown in Flint. Yeah, I don't know about the Lincoln Dairy Bar.

SPEAKER_03 13:07

This had a dairy bar in it, same anyway. I think that's where you were working when they first got married. And then so I'm not quite sure the order.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

I have to ask my old in downtown Flint. There was the home dairy because my sister was a waitress there at one time. And so that has long since knocked over. And so that's that. But I was just curious on how how and why it ended up on the east side of Flint because it seemed like such a peculiar location, but it was strategically located now that I think about it.

SPEAKER_03 13:35

Yeah, down the street from AC, and AC was a huge customer. They get these huge takeout orders, in addition, you know, to being so busy anyway.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

So, what was it like growing up in a family of immigrant? Flint, we don't really stop to think about its immigrant history and its rich history of immigrants, uh, people, you know, the original Flintstones were Native American pretty much because everybody else came from someplace else. And when Buick started that and Chevrolet and General Motors, that they were all from around Eastern Europe and and from the south and so on. But you have a specific uh region of the world and the culture is different and beautiful. Tell us about that.

Poetry Reading #3 by Karen Paul Holmes, LOADED

SPEAKER_03 14:18

I think one of the reasons they came to Michigan was the climate was somewhat similar. They were from a most of the Macedonians were from a small village called Boof, which was, if not in the mountains, um, the mountains were there. And you know, this country is now called North Macedonia, by the way. It became a country again. So I think maybe the climate was similar. My father always loved the cherry trees in uh the Traver City area because they reminded him of his childhood.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

You write poems and read them. Well, we'll give you uh give you an opportunity to read one, explain what it is and all that.

St Nicholas Orthodox Church, the center of Flint immigrants from Eastern Europe, food and family life

SPEAKER_03 14:54

Oh, thank you so much. I love sharing my poems. You know, they're kind of meant to be heard out loud. So um, so this one is about uh partly anyway, um, about um going to the Great Lakes on vacation in the summer. So a lot of people from Michigan and the surrounding areas will relate to that. Loaded. The crate myrtles are loaded. That's what Father would have said, only he'd be describing cherry trees when they're near breaking boughs to beg pickers for relief every July on our vacation. He craved the sweet dark fruit from his old country childhood. He'd stop at roadside stands, then spit the pits out the car window. We called him Daddy Cherry Seed, figuring he'd planted half the orchards in Grand Traverse County. Sometimes he'd cut the engine, glide in neutral down those northern Michigan hills, thrilling us, flatlanders who believed the Buitt was driving itself. Four flip-flopped kids squirmed in the backseat, and one scrunched between parents. We saw a cottage on Great Lake Sand. Couldn't wait to inflate the inner tube. Dad sang with heavy accent everywhere we go, there's a sign on the road. No, they can see those trees in the cherry capital, more red than green, like the crate myrtles here in Atlanta, more flower than leaf. Yes, they're loaded, drunk on their own deep pink, blazoning summer along roads and driveways, in all their glory, they would have said, their heavy arms bowing down. So they con you know, I guess how immigrants will congregate in a place one comes and then the relatives come and then more come. And I guess that's just what happened with the Macedonians in Flint. I know there's a lot of Macedonians in Toledo and Toronto also. Um, and there are Greeks.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Our church was officially called a Russian Orthodox church, but the Ukrainians, Russians, uh Serbians, Macedonians, you know, that all of those Eastern There were a lot of Eastern Europeans in in the church, which is now located, I believe, on Center Road in the Flint area.

SPEAKER_03 17:07

Yes, it is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

Was it where was it located when you were growing up?

SPEAKER_03 17:11

You know, I wish I could remember the um streets, but it was downtown and it was in a beautiful, really beautiful old building. And it may have even been an old house that they, you know, added the Russian Orthodox dome to, but it was really cool. And I remember we were excited as kids to move into the new building, but we also really missed the character, that beautiful old building. And we had this Russian Orthodox priest, he was from Russia, he had been um trained as an opera singer, he had this beautiful voice, and you know, the service is sung. He was just this really cool old man. You know, he would smoke and drink his whiskey, and he was kind-hearted and wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

Smoke and drink whiskey while the service was going on.

SPEAKER_03 17:56

No, oh at the weddings or you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Now it's your home. I mean, you were you were making food for everybody 24-7 at that place.

SPEAKER_03 18:08

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

Uh, so I imagine it was hard for your parents to like say, okay, there's going to be some space between this restaurant and my family.

SPEAKER_03 18:18

Yeah, my father worked practically 24-7. And you know, the really the best memories I have of my dad are uh every year in the summer, we would go to one of the Great Lakes. He started out at Huron, ended up going to Michigan in later years uh for three weeks. And we had my dad for three weeks. That was like an amazing experience because he just wasn't home very often.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

I always wondered because in talking to some of the owners around the Flint area of these Coney Islands over the years, I asked them, do you eat Coney Islands? And I don't think any of them do. I don't I don't think it's part. I think a lot of Flint people think this is just part of Macedonian culture, but I don't think that's true, is it?

SPEAKER_03 19:02

Well, I mean, we ate them. Uh we uh, you know, and I love the hamburgers too. Sometimes I wasn't sure whether to order a hamburger or a cone because I really loved their hamburgers too. They were fabulous quality. I said, I mean, I could still taste them, they were so good. But it was interesting because if my mom didn't feel like cooking, and you know, she was the typical 1950s, 60s, 70s mother who cooked, you know, every meal pretty much. Um, but if she didn't feel like cooking, you know, we'd go and we'd usually sometimes we'd go to into the restaurant, sometimes we do take out. She would always insist on paying because she didn't want anybody to think we were taking advantage of my father's ownership because he had partners, you know, after he and Angela were together, they eventually brought in partners. But then they would always say, No, no, no, you can't pay. And, you know, they'd always go through that. You know, just, I mean, given the popularity of the Flint Coney Island, people all over the country, you know. Still remember it, still want it, still send for the, you know, used to send for the coney sauce and the Frankfurters to be sent out to them. So it did become a phenomenon.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

Right. So you didn't come home for like Sunday dinner and have have Coneys two up or whatever. Uh that wasn't, that wasn't kind of your home fair though.

SPEAKER_03 20:21

No, my mom, um, you know, she uh well, she grew up in Australia with a Russian father and an Irish mother, and she loved lamb and the Macedonians love lamb. So we would often have roast lamb, especially like for our Easter dinner. But, you know, she would make the roasts and the potatoes and gravy and you know, the casseroles in those days were popular. And, you know, she was she cooked all the time. I mean, we always had meals together. My dad would usually be home by supper time and we'd wait for him to come home. And then, you know, we have five kids and two adults around not a very big table in the kitchen, and we'd have these meals together. He loved his coke, he was addicted to Coca-Cola from working at that restaurant.

Author Karen Paul Holmes discusses her first and second collection of poems. See the link to purchase her book No Such Thing as Distance

SPEAKER_01 21:06

You wrote this book called Distance. Tell us about that book.

SPEAKER_03 21:10

Okay, well, it is a collection of poems, and I almost always write autobiographical poems. Um, so there's memories, there's uh, you know, observations of nature, there's talking about moving from Michigan to the south and traveling to other places. So there's some travel poems, there are family memory poems, there are recipes in the back. I have some Macedonian recipes in the back. I have uh a couple poems that talk about food, as we've been talking about food, whether it's a coney or something else, is very important to families. And, you know, a lot of your memories are just uh come back to you at the taste of certain foods. So um, yeah, that it's a collection of poems that I wrote over a few years. It's my second collection. And, you know, suddenly it seemed like it was a group of poems that could work together in a book. So I started assembling the manuscript and was lucky enough to have a publisher accept it pretty quickly. Um, you know, poetry is really competitive, and sometimes you send your books, manuscripts out for years and years and years and get a lot of rejection. So I had a pretty quick acceptance on this one.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

We'll publish uh on our website at radiofreeflint.media. We'll publish the how to get the book. We'll also publish that poem. And with your permission, we'll put it on a website so people can read it and follow it. The second book you wrote, what is the name of that book?

SPEAKER_03 22:40

Well, it was the first book because that one was my second. Yeah, the first book was Untying the Knight. So uh it was a story of my divorce. I had a really painful divorce after being married for more than 30 years, and um, my husband sort of suddenly left for another woman. And so I started writing in my journal. We you and I were talking earlier about how it helps you process uh grief to write. And I started writing in my journal and then started writing poems from that journal. Contrary to popular belief for some people, poems don't just pop out of you, you know, or if they do, they're not very good at first, and you spend a lot of time editing them. And I had so many poems that after probably a year, I thought, wow, this is this could be a book. And I started putting them together and culling out poems I didn't like. You know, when you start to work on an art piece, and you might know this from your own art, that you um you sort of lose yourself in the art versus the emotion comes out in all the rough drafts, and then you sort of start working on the craft of poetry and trying to make it a better and better poem. And that sort of is a healing process too, because it gives you a sense of remove from you know the situation that caused so much grief. You know, the raw emotion is there, and yet I hope I've turned them into good poems. And uh, some of them are funny, you know, how with grieving, like I mean, people laugh at funerals. So some of them are very sad, some of them are mad, some of them are funny. And I tried to sort of you know intersperse that through there because I thought, gee, you know, just these horrible divorce poems, like nobody would want to read that. But it's funny because people relate to it. I mean, huge percentage of the population has been divorced and betrayed, and um, people have told me that they really relate to them here.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Karen, your background is is very interesting. You were in communications and you left that, and now you're you you were with a big company, uh financial services company, and now you're doing business writing.

SPEAKER_03 24:50

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

And what does that involve?

SPEAKER_03 25:47

I write copy for websites. I write, I ghostwrite articles for company executives, uh, articles that would go in industry publications. I help with slogans and advertisement, copy, sort of anything that has to do with writing, um, mainly from a marketing perspective. Sometimes I'll help with employee communication or stockholder type communication, but usually it's marketing. So, you know, I think I learned long ago, I was an editor of my high school yearbook, for example, um, to really think about how each word matters, especially if you have a small space to put it in. And uh so poems, you know, are a small space to what high school did you go to? Uh Flint Bentley.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, how did you get into this poetry business anyway? I mean, it it seems to be your passion, but tell us how you got into poetry and why it's important to you.

SPEAKER_03 26:43

Well, it's so interesting because I remember loving it in school in eighth grade. I think I won some little contest for a poem. And you know, in in 12th grade, I had a wonderful English teacher. And so I developed this love of reading and writing. And um, but I wrote a lot of poems and just stuck them in a notebook. And at University of Michigan, I took uh one poetry class. I was actually a music major. I played the French horn and I um was a music history major. I have a master's degree, but I always loved writing. In fact, when I put my application down for University of Michigan, I was like, music or major in English, music or English. So, you know, the music business is really hard. French horn is very hard and competitive. And so I sort of moved into my second love as a career and started, you know, doing various marketing type activities that had to do with writing. So for a long time I was very happy doing this business style writing because it was still writing, it was still creative. Um, something put a spark in me, and I started writing poetry more and more, more seriously. Uh, I guess that was 12 years ago, maybe. I started, I took a workshop. I joined a poetry community both in the mountains where I have a cabin and in Atlanta. And then yeah, I realized, okay, I've been writing so so much of my career, but it's poetry that really just gets the juices going, like you said.

SPEAKER_01 28:12

You know, it's you you you hold workshops and things of this nature, right?

SPEAKER_03 28:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

What is it exactly that poetry does for you?

SPEAKER_03 28:22

Well, for me, you know, it's so hard to describe, but you know, that feeling of when a piece of art will just strike you, you know, it'll either bring gives you some shivers or tears or laughter or you know, an aha moment, like, oh, that poet feels exactly like I feel, or that metaphor. I never thought of describing something that way, but that's so perfect. So reading poetry, I love that. And then writing it, that's what I strive for. Um, I I'm not really into poetry that's abstract, you know, that's popular. And I think some people get turned off by poetry because they're like, oh, I don't understand it. Um so I like poems that I can understand. Even if not every detail about the poem is understandable, there's got to be some sort of a connection for me, like an oh, you know.

SPEAKER_01 29:11

You know, I I often go back to my background at Freeman Elementary School on Ogoma Street and Ogoma Avenue in Flint, Michigan. And my first introduction to poetry was E. E. Cummings. I think it was in, I don't know, fifth, sixth grade. He capitalized things wrong and he he didn't make whole sentences and and he kind of broke all the rules.

SPEAKER_03 29:34

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 29:35

And I was impressed by the fact he could get away with it, and he was interesting. Is that what poetry does for you? It gives you uh a freedom outside of the proper English language. I mean, we wouldn't put this kind of language in a in a legal brief to a judge, they'd go nuts.

SPEAKER_03 29:52

Exactly. Yeah, I think you know, a lot of kids really like E. Cummings. And yeah, I think it's it's sort of like, you know, you think of Picasso, how he actually could uh draw and paint things that look very realistic. You know, he learned the rules, but then he broke them. And so I think that's you know the way it is. And I, you know, I'm kind of a grammar Nazi, so I'm pretty picky about grammar in the poems that I write. I don't I don't mind it in other poems as long as I can understand it. So I think that's the whole thing about the way a poem appears on the page, the the line breaks, the capitalizations, capitalizations, whether they use periods or commas and stanza breaks. To me, it's all a matter of uh helping the reader navigate through the poem the way you want the reader to. Yeah, you can you can break rules as long as they they make sense for the poem and they work for the poem.

SPEAKER_01 30:43

How has poetry changed your life?

How Flint shaped Karen's views, career and contribute to her success as a poet. Are you a Flintstone?

SPEAKER_03 30:46

Uh good question. I would say, like I said uh minute ago that it's like I found my passion. It sort of lit me up in a way that I hadn't been lit up before. I had been partially lit, but then you know, this bonfire started. So I think, you know, the self-expression, the um also the emphasis on the craft and the really uh just working, working, working to edit a poem to make it right. Um and a big part is the poetry community. Uh many, many of my friends now are poets that I didn't know uh as friends or maybe not even as poets years ago. And now it's a huge part of my community.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

Does poetry better help yourself help you understand yourself or others?

SPEAKER_03 31:31

You know, both, but I would say for me, it's it is helping me understand myself, my emotions, um, or my observations, either, you know, like of nature. Um, how would I describe that particular thing? Um so yeah, I think it it makes you more observant. It makes you really uh, you know, you have the emotion, but then you have the thought process too. And that's both of those are very interesting.

SPEAKER_01 31:57

Let me close by um asking you a couple of questions about Flint. Um you were raised in Flint and you spent your your early years in Flint, and then you moved on. But what I want to know is, and we've asked this of a lot of guests, uh, how has Flint shaped you? What was it about Flint? What was it in Flint that that made you who you are today? Well, that ingredient is the question.

SPEAKER_03 32:24

Yeah, that's really interesting. Um, I gosh, there's so many factors. I think uh the size of the town was really nice to grow up in, especially since I was sort of out in the country, you know, we were on an acre of land. Um so I had that, but I also had the downtown experience. And so I love that, you know, like sort of going into the big city, which wasn't so big that it was scary. And then the auto industry. Uh, we only drove Buicks, and most of the kids I went to school with parents worked in the factories, either AC or one of the GM plants. So, you know, you you also grew up with that, you know, that whole automobile thing that, you know, we were proud of our automobiles. And, you know, I remember when our church, um, someone when I was probably in high school um bought a Mercedes. And it was like, oh my gosh, that Mercedes is so beautiful, but it's not, you know, it's not a Michigan car. Oh my gosh. And um, so yeah, just that whole thing. And I think the fact that my father's restaurant fed so many of those workers and those hard, hard workers. When I left Flint for University of Michigan, I was so ready to, you know, experience the um, you know, the university life and get away from you know my hometown. Um, but I majored in music and you know, my parents had uh tickets to the Flint Symphony, and my mother was a member of the Art Institute. And I remember going there and volunteering, helping her with some event. I remember as a kid taking an art class there. I still have a little sculpture of an animal that I that I made in that art class. So that whole art center in Flint had a really big impact on me.

SPEAKER_01 34:09

How would you describe Flint in one word or two?

SPEAKER_03 34:12

Gosh, well, I mean, the Flint that I grew up with, because I hardly know the Flint of today, and I know it's had its huge problems. Um I would say uh, you know, a medium-sized town with this interesting dichotomy of being built around the auto industry and yet having a wonderful art scene at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

That's more than one word.

SPEAKER_03 34:34

Sorry, oh um, diverse.

SPEAKER_01 34:39

Okay, I'll take that. Are you a Flintstone? Do you know what that means?

SPEAKER_03 34:43

Well, you know, I'm not sure. I'd never heard that term before I listened to your podcast, and I like it. Um, I like it better than like Flint eyed or Michigander. Yeah, so at heart I am. Um, I mean, I'd say maybe I'm a former Flintstone, but still has uh, you know, a deep connection and happy memories.

Conclusion: The Sounds of Lake Michigan by Arthur Busch

SPEAKER_01 35:02

Karen, thank you for joining Radio Free Flint. I appreciate it. And it's been very enjoyable to meet you and chat with you. Um, I hope that uh we get a chance to talk to you again. I I never dreamed when I started a podcast that I'd be interviewing poets, uh uh, but it's it's really been a pleasure. So, with that said, uh, you've wrote two books. If people want to get uh copies of your books, they can do so by uh calling you at home. No, they don't do that. How would they get a hold of the books?

SPEAKER_03 35:33

Well, they're actually both on Amazon.com. And um, you know, if you search for Karen Paul Holmes um or one of the titles, No Such Thing as Distance or Untying the Knot, you can pretty easily find them on Amazon.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

All right, we'll put links to both books in our in our uh description of the podcast. Thank you, Karen. I hope to see you again.

SPEAKER_03 35:54

Thank you. I'm really glad we met and that we did this, and thank you for letting me share my homes and my story.

SPEAKER_00 36:01

So I'll leave you with uh a few seconds here of what's uh Lake Michigan's all about, which is the lake. And uh I'll leave you like uh Charles Carrell. Some of you might be a little bit too young for Charles, but he used to do uh a segment where he left. Take care of him.