A Jackass Offers an Apology: David Reads a Poem by Mitchell Nobis

David talks with Mitchell Nobis about his first book of poetry, The Size of the Horizon, or I Explained Everything to the Trees. The poetry discussion spans the topics nature and politics to gun violence and publishing, all wrapped in a discussion centered on three poems. 

Poems: 

1. "A Jackass Offers and Apology" from The Size of the Horizon, or I Explained Everything to the Trees (2025, Matchbox Editions)
2. "Monumental" from The Size of the Horizon, or I Explained Everything to the Trees (2025, Matchbox Editions)
3.  "For All” by Gary Snyder was presented as published in The Gary Snyder Reader: Prose, Poetry, and Translations, 1952-1998 (Volume I, 1999 Counterpoint). Used with Permission.

Mitchell's Bio:

Mitchell Nobis is a writer and K-12 public school teacher in Metro Detroit where he lives with his family and dog. He facilitates the Teachers as Poets group for the National Writing Project, hosts the Wednesday Night Sessions reading series for KickstART Farmington, and co-founded the Not at AWP (NAWP) reading series. He is a past president of the Michigan Council of Teachers of English and former co-director of Red Cedar Writing Project, and he co-authored Real Writing: Modernizing the Old School Essay, a pedagogical text for writing teachers. For more, see mitchnobis.com or find him falling apart on a basketball court.

Links:

mitchnobis.com

The Size of the Horizon, or I Explained Everything to the Trees

Transcript

David (00:00)
Welcome to episode two of in three poems. Our guest poet is Mitchell Nobis. The first two poems in this episode are from Mitch's book, The Size of the Horizon, or I Explained Everything to the Trees, published in 2025 by Matchbox Editions. And Mitchell will also share with us a favorite poem of his by Gary Snyder. I'm David J. Baumann, your host. Mitchell and I actually talked back in September. So let's take a listen.

David J Bauman (00:27)
Mitch Nobis with us today who has a new book of poetry called The Size of the Horizon:

Or I Explained Everything to the Trees. And we're going to read a couple of poems from this. I'm going to read one and Mitch is going to read one. Thanks for joining me today in a conversation in three poems.

Mitch Nobis (00:46)
you for having me, David. This is ⁓ fun.

David J Bauman (00:48)
We've had a great time just chatting and then I thought we need to hit record at some point. So here we go. Let's just jump right into the first poem and I'm honored to get a chance to read this very familiar sort of situation called A Jackass Offers an Apology.

Mitch Nobis (00:52)
Yes, at some point.

David J Bauman (01:08)
I offer my sincerest apologies to my fellow motorists because, I turned left in front of oncoming traffic in a snowstorm no less, thinking I had a green left turn error when in fact I had only a standard green light and a head full of worries, a wife and child with the flu, a pay cut looming, a to-do list too long to get done. But there is no excuse.

for almost smashing up a half a dozen cars in four inches of grimy rush hour slush like my toddler would do with his trucks in the basement carpet pile. And I'm sorry for being that driver, the guy I would normally scream at with an unholy fervor of the frustrated and angry whose perceived wrongs erupt and splash vitriol and spittle across the inside of so many windshields.

I accept my deserved curses, though I'm sorrier yet for yelling at others those hundreds of times before because ⁓ how we hope to simplify our world by yelling. But ⁓ how miserably, how sadly we fail and fail and fail despite the continued flying of our birds. Those egocentric flags, angry exclamation points.

jabbing out the windows where scared, tentative question marks would be more accurate, more honest.

And like I said, that is so damn familiar. I have lived this moment.

Mitch Nobis (02:54)
Too many times. Thank you for that reading. That was fantastic.

David J Bauman (02:58)
Oh, what is it? Just a great poem to read, a lot of fun to read. It reminded me of a story my kids for years have said this phrase to me afterwards because an 18-wheeler almost hit me as it moved over too quickly on the highway. And, you know, the kids are young, one of them in a baby seat.

back there and you're a single dad and upset and there are schedules and things to do lists All that kind of stuff in your head. And I did that gesture. I raised my egocentric flag and gave him the finger as he hit the horn. Even though I knew he was like 10 times bigger than I was. And one of my boys said,

Mitch Nobis (03:36)
I mean.

Yeah.

David J Bauman (03:44)
Dad, did you just give him the finger? And I said, I was just telling him he was number one. I was trying to encourage him with positive reinforcement to be a better driver. And after that, whenever something happened in traffic, they're always, tell him he's number one, dad. Tell him they're number one.

Mitch Nobis (03:58)
You

my God, that's fantastic. Yeah. ⁓

David J Bauman (04:01)
So yeah, you can see why I love that piece.

the thing about it is ⁓ it seems almost flippant at first. Those first, ⁓ I offer my sincerest apologies to my fellow motorists. It's almost a Billy Collins way of sort of flippantly rolling off that first line. But then it turns serious pretty quickly by the second stanza, you've.

confessed your sin, but also said, hey, this is all the stuff that was going through my head, wife and child with the flu, pay cut looming, to do list, too long to get done. And then go even deeper into saying, feeling regretful being that driver who was doing the yelling before.

I've tried to do that more, think, as I've gotten older of realizing, okay, that person who cut me off, that probably wasn't about me. And it might not have just been something mean and careless on their part. It just might literally just have been somebody hit their dog today, for all I know.

Mitch Nobis (05:03)
Yeah, yeah, they're

distracted.

David J Bauman (05:06)
But it's tough in the United States. You're afraid to do that finger thing anymore because people slam on their brakes and are carrying guns. ⁓ I don't want to exaggerate that. Part of it is probably modern technology bringing those scenes to our phones so quickly. But I have had that happen before too, where I honked at somebody and they slammed on their...

brakes right in front of me, you know, and I thought, geez, we're in for it now. But luckily he moved on after I stopped. But was a scary moment because we're on the back road of Pennsylvania and who knows what he was on besides anger.

Mitch Nobis (05:34)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. But what what brutal mix, what kind of brew is going in there that's anger fueled by what?

David J Bauman (05:54)
Yeah, yeah, more than just me probably. I take it this is, I take it this is if not an exact scene from life. It's the sort of thing that.

Mitch Nobis (05:57)
Yes. ⁓

David J Bauman (06:04)
would likely happen.

Mitch Nobis (06:05)
That one is, I mean, I can distinctly remember the exact moment that is very much a real scene from life. ⁓ And it's also a good reminder that this book is, while it's brand new, while it just came out three months, four months, I don't know, recently, I should know that, two and a half months ago.

David J Bauman (06:11)
Yeah.

You were almost

apologizing for it coming out for a while, at least apologizing for promoting it. It's like, no, promoting it's a good look.

Mitch Nobis (06:30)
Oh, it's

so I mean, you're in Pennsylvania, I'm in Michigan, like the Midwestern or thing like I really doesn't come naturally to me to be like on social media 10 times a day, like buy my book, buy my book, buy my book. But like I and then I run into people and like, you have a book? Okay, I guess I probably should do this at least a little bit. And then I feel so self conscious and guilty doing it. I'm like, sorry, it's me again, telling you to buy my book.

David J Bauman (06:46)
You

But here's the good news. Part of the reason why I want to do this is not just seeing how those poems connect and that is a big thing that I like to do, but also give people the chance to, Shay, what is it you're doing? How can people get their hands on it? ⁓ So we can talk about the...

Mitch Nobis (07:08)
How do we make sure that all

we got to make sure that all 100 people that buy poetry books in America buy our books.

David J Bauman (07:13)
Exactly,

exactly.

Mitch Nobis (07:19)
but yeah, this

so this poem is actually a very specific moment. And what I was saying is, even though the book is brand new, the manuscript is actually quite old, the vast majority of it. ⁓ And this is a this is a great recession poem, you know, and I'm outside Detroit and the Great Recession slammed us like I ended up ⁓ I won't bore you with teacher details. I'm a teacher by trade and Michigan has since changed how it does teacher layoffs. But at the time back during

David J Bauman (07:28)
Mm-hmm.

Mitch Nobis (07:46)
2010, this would have been, it was last person in first person out when they do pink slips. And I had just like my wife and I just gotten married, we decided to move me not her. So we knew that I was almost certainly going to get get laid off. And sure enough, like this poem is is from as that's all going down. So it's not really, you know, I didn't explain all that in the poem.

David J Bauman (07:52)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Mitch Nobis (08:07)
essay on how the Michigan legislature has, you know, stuck its finger in the pie of education is not that doesn't belong in the second stanza.

David J Bauman (08:17)
Exactly,

But you can feel it all. And that's part of the beauty of poetry is you can say that between the lines. Those ⁓ certain pauses or turns during the piece. there are several turns. The next one is when you say I accept.

my deserved curses. So it's like you've got almost the confession at the beginning that deepens as it goes because then you're also saying you don't say yeah but here are my excuses you just

lay it out, hey this is all the shit that was going on in my mind and in my heart, and then you say I accept my deserved curses, you know, I'll do my Hail Mary's here. Sorry, I was recovering Protestant, I wasn't a Catholic, so maybe I can't say that. So I guess I can't say that necessarily.

Mitch Nobis (08:58)
Now we do it. Lutheran over here, raise Lutheran.

David J Bauman (09:06)
that confession that how we hope to simplify our world by yelling. And you said this may have been written, what, as much as 20 years ago.

Mitch Nobis (09:14)
Yeah, ⁓

David J Bauman (09:15)
Yeah. that one of my poems

in my first chapbook, one of the poems in there was written, my God, like 30 some years ago when I went to school to be an English teacher before I headed down the librarian path.

somebody gave me such glowing review of it. That was their favorite poem in the whole book.

And I thought that's the oldest piece. Like all the work that I did after that was not as good apparently as that one poem.

Mitch Nobis (09:37)
Yeah. Yeah. ⁓

David J Bauman (09:42)
But there is a timelessness to this work and it's good to not forget what we wrote ourselves or our friends wrote just not too long ago. So there's another reason to continue talking about the work that you've done. I love that you say despite the continued flying of our birds, because at first,

Mitch Nobis (09:54)
Yeah, absolutely.

David J Bauman (09:59)
I was like, yeah, flying birds, I'm a bird. I like that, ⁓ the bird, I get it. So. But you've got a couple of ways there that you're playing around with language and you do it in the next poem that you're going to read too. We can talk about that. But that vulnerability at the end, being so important, the tentative question marks, that would be more accurate than those exclamation marks. that.

Mitch Nobis (10:04)
Yep.

David J Bauman (10:24)
20 years ago speaks to today when you've got so many people angry about so many things because some people are getting wealthy telling them who to hate, you know, and it's a tough country to live in at the moment. So part of this whole thing though about the three poems is looking at how poems communicate with each other and

Mitch Nobis (10:35)
for elements.

David J Bauman (10:47)
I'd like us to jump into the next one that you're going to read also from the book, The Size of the Horizon. Is it okay if I brief, do the brief part or I explain everything to the tree? It's such a great title though.

Mitch Nobis (11:02)
Thank you. Now the book title. So the original,

when I envisioned this, there is a story behind the title and I always kind of tell people like, yeah, there's a reason for the long title, but that's kind of a story for me. Like I don't really tell the whole, there is a background to it, but I feel like it's, I kind of like to let it stand. So it ended up landing with Match Factory Editions who are fantastic. They're a brand new press. This is one of their first books.

David J Bauman (11:15)
There you go. There you go.

Yeah.

Mitch Nobis (11:30)
And I couldn't be happier to help roll out this, to be one of the books that are helping roll out this press, because they're just, they're fantastic readers, they're fantastic editors, they've been just lovely people to work with. One cool thing about their press is they're going with a house design. So every book they put out has the same kind of clamshell vintage look, like Match Factory, like kind of like an old match book kind of idea, right? Which I think is so cool.

David J Bauman (11:52)
Okay

catcha nice

Mitch Nobis (11:59)
But you never like when you're putting a manuscript out there when you're submitting your manuscript and you're know, you're mowing the lawn and you're getting lost and thought like someday this will land and get published. Like what will the cover look like? You know, and I had this this vision of like the size of the horizon being like, you know, the size 50 font or whatever. And or I explained everything to the trees being like, you know, half the size, like a little a little redundant kind of.

David J Bauman (12:21)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mitch Nobis (12:25)
title and then it landed with the match factory where everything is just like, Nope, this is, this is how big it is. It was like, that really highlights the, the, or I explained everything to the trees, which is totally fine with me. I love it. It's just not.

David J Bauman (12:37)
It

is great. It kind of reminds me of who wrote the poem and gee, I wish I could put this in in post-production, but I don't think I'll be that slick. Who wrote the poem that the title is something like ⁓ after reading a book of bad poetry, I retreat to, I forget somewhere, to watch the ants. It's a nice long title that is probably longer than the first stanza. But it works really well.

Mitch Nobis (13:03)
Yeah.

David J Bauman (13:07)
So in the book we have another poem, ⁓ lots of other poems, but one that we talked about for you to read and it's called Monumental and I'd you to read that one for

Mitch Nobis (13:21)
I would be happy to, thank you.

Monumental. I stepped off the metro in March to a sea of teenagers still holding their signs. I'll miss my friends more than you'll miss your guns. Their faces alive with voice, their eyes beacons of belief. The students straggled toward home, the protest over. They walked past monuments to war and to warriors. 35 children and teachers have been torn to death by bullets at school this year.

It is not yet summer. Seniors graduate today. The children hollered at the Capitol, brandished slogans, protect us, not guns, openly carried their signs high above their heads, packing words with pride. In 2013, the Advanced Placement English Language and Composition Exam asked students to write an essay that would examine the factors a group or agency should consider in memorializing an event or person and in creating a monument.

I walked down the mall as students marched away past monuments to war, to war, to war, holding their signs. The scariest thing in a school should be my grades.

students wrote an essay that year explaining what's worth memorializing, what merits a monument. This year, 35 kids and teachers died, shot at school. More Americans dead at school than war, but who's at war, really? We have enlisted grunts without their permissions or 16th birthdays.

examine the factors a group or agency should consider in memorializing an event or person and in creating a monument. I've never really thought about that before, the students said, but they have now as they laugh together, ready to bury yesterday for tomorrow.

David J Bauman (15:22)
Mm-hmm.

You know, I was saying earlier about the way poems communicate with each other. And you might think there are a lot of ways this is different than the first poem, but there are a lot of ways that there's the same heart and spirit in there, that anger.

Mitch Nobis (15:40)
It's funny you say it like when I when I get to the last line, I close the book. I'm like, I had to take it like I have to slow down my heart rate like I'd get so. You know, not happy about guns in our country. I'll just leave it at that.

David J Bauman (15:47)
Yeah.

I agree with you. I agree with you. That's why I was glad you were going to read this. Of course, by the time this comes out, there will have already been some things, know, something that shouldn't have happened. ⁓ But it just... the irony is it's just hard to deal with that finally a whole lot of people who weren't upset about the children being killed are now upset about this horrific.

Mitch Nobis (16:02)
Yeah.

David J Bauman (16:15)
in a thing and somebody had mentioned that's the first, ⁓ that's the first school shooting. Cause technically it was on a campus. Yeah. So that was the first school shooting that some people really got up in arms about. Up in arms, not trying to do the pun, but you have some of that word play in here that with the kids packing, how was that? Open carried their signs and packing words with

Mitch Nobis (16:23)
was a cool shooting.

Yep.

and they carry it.

David J Bauman (16:42)
pride, you've got some of that, those peas and the hard music there. But it feels like it feels like a ⁓ bitter sort of humor.

which kind of we don't, don't we all have to do to find some way of smiling through the horror and anger of it all. And I mean, it's funny at the beginning of this, the first thing I thought of, how is this poem like the first one? Well, they're both about transportation. Because in the first one, the first one I'm driving in the second one, you're, ⁓ as you said, you're a teacher. So were these students of yours in this poem?

Mitch Nobis (16:58)
Yeah.

Ha ⁓

So

no, and that was actually one of my, ⁓ you think about all the revised versions you have of a poem, right? And there, this one is one where there are drafts where I try to explain how a guy from Michigan is in Washington, DC, bopping up off the Metro and going down the National Mall. ⁓ But it just, was, it was too much exposition, you know, it like a memoir, it read like prose. So I guess I just kind of took the risk of hoping the reader between Metro and Mall and

David J Bauman (17:23)
Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mitch Nobis (17:44)
monuments would, you know, make the connection and if not, so be it, you know, it's still it's still a protest with students. So they're not my students. I was actually in DC. ⁓ I used to do some ⁓ ed funding advocacy work, voluntary stuff, I would get down there. I mean, literally for like one day a year, I would go and work Capitol Hill to advocate for funding for some teacher professional development.

David J Bauman (17:48)
Right.

Mitch Nobis (18:06)
And it was I'd been doing it for several years at this point. This is this is post Parkland. If you recall, after the Parkland shooting.

⁓ It's very difficult to keep all the shooting straight in my mind, but that one got a bit more media attention. And that's the one that had the big, it's a march for our lives. Is that what they called it? A big march in DC. And as luck would have it, I arrived to come do my advocacy work the next was the next day after that big protest. as I'm, you know, I'm lugging my luggage still coming up off the Metro and it's just a sea of kids. The protests had just ended and they've also got their signs.

And there's another, the ending does kind of capture like that they're ⁓ laughing, but there's another draft that goes deep into that. Like, I probably should write an essay, a personal essay about this someday also, because it was just so enervating and energizing to watch these kids who they were so alive and just thrilled and joyous, joyous. And this is part of what ⁓ as a teacher and as dad and really just an American, a human part of what is so

deeply and intensely frustrating about our ⁓ disinterest at a leadership level to address guns is that if you know any number of kids, they're amazing. They're fantastic. And to walk up like they're, they're worried about guns and they've seen their peers, whether they knew them or not, you know, like you might be from Jersey, but you, you know, you see what happened in Parkland. You're still affected by it. And to see them go like take pride and

David J Bauman (19:16)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Mitch Nobis (19:36)
use their voices and just so much joy being together doing it like how you could live and work in the legislature and be there and see that and not do something about it. I literally can't understand it.

David J Bauman (19:47)
be dead to that. Yeah.

Yeah, it's what I wrote in the margins there on that was, the whole idea of having a voice, that feeling of when you're when you're first going to for a lot of them, probably their first protest.

Mitch Nobis (20:02)
Yeah, you could, you could, they were alive with it. Their eyes, was amazing.

David J Bauman (20:05)
Yeah,

and how frustrating that must be after you've gone to so many protests And it does, it makes you want to slap congressmen upside the head and... ⁓

Mitch Nobis (20:13)
Yeah, there's a much more

boring sequel poem I could write about then going to the Hill the next day to talk to them about like, can we have some money to teach these kids better?

David J Bauman (20:21)
when you say we have enlisted grunts without their permission or 16th birthdays, that hits really hard because at first I'm thinking we've enlisted and I'm thinking of the protesters, know, out there maybe doing what we should have been doing. Or the adults in the room or in the district.

should have been doing, but also very much the enlisting the grunt. mean, that's the kids that have died.

without even their 16th birthday. They never even got the chance to enlist in the fight and they're part of it. And that gets very, that's very sobering.

And I love the work about the essay written through there, because that's also work that we're making them do. Yeah, write about this thing that we should be taking care of and protecting you from. But what would you do? How would you write about it? There's a

condescending carelessness about that being,

Mitch Nobis (21:16)
Well, and there's like when they ⁓ for a group like the College Board who's writing the AP English exams, there's such a sanitizing process, like by the time you land on a prompt, because they know hundreds of thousands of kids are going to write this. So it's got to be an accessible prompt to everybody. It has to be like a generic enough question that anyone could develop an opinion on it on the spot. And then just the irony of

David J Bauman (21:27)
Mm-hmm.

Mitch Nobis (21:42)
I guess a couple of years later, I forget the timeline of when Parkland would have happened. But, you know, so these kids write about this. And then a couple of years later, it's like, we do need memorials for for our generation. ⁓ Well, it's they the College Board thinks are coming up with just some bland generic everybody can write about this. We're looking to see, can you craft a good argumentative essay on the spot? And then they, you know, unwittingly just hit a nail smack on the head.

David J Bauman (21:53)
Yeah.

Mitch Nobis (22:08)
These kids do know something about memorializing. They shouldn't have to, but they do.

David J Bauman (22:14)
Right,

unenlisted, So they've been drafted into it.

Mitch Nobis (22:18)
you know, I'm always fascinated by craft. And for me, like that poem came out of two things. One, seeing all those kids and like just wanting to do something to honor that moment, you know, like, and I hope the poem, whenever I do a piece like that, like I'm not trying to like steal the valor for myself. Like I hope it reflects them. Like that was kind of my goal is like, I want to try to capture this for some other audience who wasn't there and could see it. And, you know, I hope that comes through.

And it's also a visual poem, since this is a podcast, we probably should mention it's a visual poem. The stuff about the AP test is offset. It's like indented. It kind of reads like two streams. So thank you. you know, they do kind of dovetail then at the end with the.

David J Bauman (22:45)
It does.

And

Right. But you did, you know, change the inflection of the voice enough that I think, you know, anybody listening could tell this. ⁓ is.

Mitch Nobis (23:04)
I cried. I don't get

to give in person readings very often. But when I do, actually like try to look like two different directions, like to capture that idea that it's like a two voice poem almost. ⁓ But yeah, that that unenlisted grunts thing. That's what I was going to say. So like the poem, like I wanted to capture that moment to share with others. But then that was kind of, you know, sometimes when you're writing, you get to a line, you're like, OK, I do have a poem here. And for this one, for me, that was when I knew I had a poem here and I wasn't just journaling, you know.

David J Bauman (23:11)
Well done.

Yeah.

For the third poem for today's episode, I asked you to choose a poem by another poet that either inspired you or meant something to you that you read, whether or not you directly thought it.

would go with the other things we reading. And really, we didn't know everything we were reading right away, so I'm just thrilled with how beautifully these all mesh together. The poem you chose was called For All by Gary Snyder. And I think originally from the book Axe Handles, but I think we also found it in the best of, yeah, you got the book with you, okay.

Mitch Nobis (23:52)
Yeah.

David J Bauman (24:10)
We're both reading old school from the actual pages. Is there anything you want to say about the poem before you read it or do you want to just jump in and?

Mitch Nobis (24:17)
⁓

I mean, the poem itself can certainly stand on its own. guess I would just do ⁓ whenever I'm given the chance to talk about another poet or share other poems like Gary Snyder is always the first one that comes to my mind. He is my North Star, I guess you could say as far as poetry goes. I have dozens of other poets I consider long distance mentors. know, people I've never I'll never meet, never get to know, but their work. ⁓

David J Bauman (24:23)
Yeah.

Good choice.

Mm-hmm.

Mitch Nobis (24:47)
really deeply informs what I do. But Gary Snyder, like very long story short, ⁓ I'm sitting in a lecture hall in Ann Arbor in the early 90s, and a professor says, we're gonna read Turtle Island. We're gonna read an entire book, not just a anthology, you know, normally when you're learning in an English class, it's anthologies, here's a little of this, here's a little of that. And he was a the first poet for whom I read an entire book, a whole collection.

David J Bauman (24:49)
I like that phrase.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mitch Nobis (25:15)
and B, couldn't have jived more with my own mindset about life, know, like everything keys into the natural world and the environment. We are natural world ourselves. We really love to forget that. And so while this particular poem is not necessarily going to be reflected a lot, neither the ones that we just read. do have a lot of I I've been writing long enough now since that moment that I don't feel like

David J Bauman (25:22)
Mm.

Mitch Nobis (25:44)
It's super obvious that I'm a Gary Snyder fanboy. then, but yeah, it takes it takes a while. But like, I feel like that's happened because for a while it definitely hadn't. But then every now and I'm like, like when I was flipping through my book, getting ready for this tonight, I'm like, OK, I I can see where it's still in there. You know, there is still enough forms where like the environmental aspect plays a central, although sometimes quiet role. So.

David J Bauman (25:49)
You've got your own voice, definitely.

Mitch Nobis (26:09)
Like now this specific poem doesn't connect to the two that we just read, but Snyder's work. I wouldn't have started writing poetry without discovering Gary Snyder in 1992, three, whatever year that I

David J Bauman (26:22)
much

the same way about William Stafford, whom I discovered around the same time you discovered Gary Snyder. I came to Gary Snyder later,

And we can talk about that after you read it. I'll let you read it.

Mitch Nobis (26:33)
All right, sounds good. Sounds good.

Here is For All by Gary Snyder. ⁓ to be alive on a mid September morn, fording a stream, barefoot, pants rolled up, holding boots, pack on, sunshine, ice in the shallows, northern Rockies. Russell and shimmer of icy creek waters, stones turned underfoot, small and hard as toes.

cold nose dripping, singing inside, creek music, heart music, smell of sun on gravel. I pledge allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the soil of Turtle Island and to the beings who thereon dwell, one ecosystem in diversity under the sun with joyful interpenetration for all.

David J Bauman (27:27)
Now see, I'm thinking, wow, where to start? Because you were talking about being in DC and kids protesting and also, you being there for your own mission, looking for funding and looking at how the machine is so broken and the lobbying and the, I want to say the word.

Mitch Nobis (27:51)
Well, and

I wish the man had kept writing at a higher clip, but he kind of he took his work tailed off because he got involved in politics like he did the thing. He did the deal like he got very active in his local politics, which is what we should all do. But he did it right, which is why why he's like a prophet to me.

David J Bauman (27:58)
Mmm, yeah. Yeah.

And so, he, but when he's pledging allegiance, it's not like those kids standing up in front of the flag. He pledges allegiance to the soil, to Turtle Island and the beings who thereon dwell. And this is still one nation. It's like one ecosystem and in diversity, which is like that, that gives that word gives people fits these days ⁓ where there's strength in that diversity.

Mitch Nobis (28:20)
Yeah.

one ecosystem.

Yeah.

David J Bauman (28:40)
and some people aren't seeing that.

Mitch Nobis (28:42)
Well, and

just like it's factual. Like it's just it's a recognition. It's like it. And I'll be honest, I think I think a lot of people the first time you read this poem, you think that last line is interpretation, but it's interpenetration. And like that, that's such the key, right? Like you know, man is an island like nothing is separate. Like not only is no person an island, no species is separate, like nothing is separate.

David J Bauman (28:45)
Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's what I wrote down too. Let's talk about that word interpenetration. ⁓

Mitch Nobis (29:10)
Yeah, it's so brilliant. Like

you talk about the craft. Like I love so much of this poem. Sorry, I'll let you get a question. ⁓

David J Bauman (29:16)
No, no, this is great. This is

great. Because he's doing that too. He's walking barefoot through the stream, which is a form of penetrating the ecosystem, the water itself. I assume walking in the mud afterwards, you know, and on the rocks and dirt. And how we all are interconnected, not in just, you know, this lofty cosmic metaphysical way, but quite literally.

with joyful, not just interpenetration, but joyful interpenetration for all. And speaking of craft, the music in this, there are things like from Shallows, Toes and Nose, know, spreading those O's out over several lines, but also the music of the Creek music, Heart music, Smell of Sun, those, those S's. There's so much that he just excelled at.

Mitch Nobis (29:42)
Yes. ⁓

Greek music, yeah.

David J Bauman (30:06)
and he brings us to this place out in the woods.

Mitch Nobis (30:09)
It's just, yeah, I mean, it's just so beautiful. so perfect. One of my oldest buddies and I will still occasionally sign off an email to each other with Creek Music, Hart Music, you know, like it's like, ⁓ I'm not a tattoos guy, but if I was, that'd be right up there as far as I'm

David J Bauman (30:16)
I love it. That's fantastic.

That's a great

phrase. Yeah, I'm too much of a wimp for that, I think.

Mitch Nobis (30:25)
I have my reasons, yeah.

We were talking about craft earlier and this poem does so much of what I subconsciously think. Like I was saying earlier, I don't really think any of my book is gonna be an obvious connection, but then I read this right now right after talking about my work, which is something I've never actually done before. And he really is doing something I think I try to do often because let me, before I proceed with the rest of this thought.

David J Bauman (30:44)
Right.

Mitch Nobis (30:52)
be very clear that I am no Gary Snyder. This man is an American icon of letters to me, but the whole first half it's it's so image based right like I'm hiking, nose dripping mid September morning. I love that we read this in mid September even like total like accident but it's beautiful. ⁓ It's all it's like it's just it's an image you're there it's it's very ⁓ Eastern you know he studied

David J Bauman (30:55)
How?

Yeah.

Yeah, Eastern philosophy.

Mitch Nobis (31:21)
in Asia. Yeah,

it's very just the image, just the moment. But then he he's also very aware that politics isn't everything. Politics is not a separate topic. We like to pretend it is. But the ecosystem is everything and politics is everything. They are both in everything in this poem puts them both right in there. You know, he takes the Pledge of Allegiance and he turns it into something that really does apply to everybody regardless of a flag.

David J Bauman (31:32)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, and I think you can see that influence in the work that you do. I realize you have a different voice and go on a different aim and you're not trying to be a wise Eastern mystic kind of guy, but the influence is there. You've got your own voice and you say it so well. So you don't have to put yourself in negative competition with Gary Snyder.

Mitch Nobis (31:52)
to it.

Well, I love these like, you said wise

and this is this is how my brain works. As you're saying wise, I'm like, yeah, no, because I'm a wise ass. And like along the along the way, I realize that my own. Yeah, my own written voice is going to have to acknowledge that. Thus, there's a series of poems about a jackass, you know, like I am what I

David J Bauman (32:14)
A jackass who offers an apology.

Yeah.

yeah, and at some point you got to embrace it, right?

Mitch Nobis (32:29)
Yeah, yeah, I think over the years, I

learned to just lean into it. I don't make a lot of conscious choices as a writer. I'll make some conscious choices as a reviser. But like, I've never I have a lot of ongoing conversations with like, know, Jared Veloff and some other folks about putting together manuscript because the market so loves the prize system, so loves and prioritizes the mono focused.

David J Bauman (32:39)
Mm-hmm.

Mitch Nobis (32:56)
poetry manuscript. Like here's my book about topic. like, you know, I don't pick a topic, any topic. I was just reading Sharon Olds — divorce, Stag's Leap. Here's my divorce book. Right. And every poem in the book has to be about that topic. And I love a lot of books like that. Like I am not saying that's a bad approach, but like we're in this, we've been in this kind of weird space where that's, it feels like that's the only thing valued. And, and I, that's not how my brain works.

Right. So back to what I saying, like you realize how your own brain works over time. And as a writer over time, you realize, like, I can't just sit down and say, I'm about to write 80 poems about X, and then I'm going to take the 40 best. And that's my book. Like, I can't do that. I have one very long standing project, two very long standing projects that may someday end up being that. But I write like two poems to that project for a year.

David J Bauman (33:25)
Right.

Yeah, well that's kind of how I got the first chapbook published is because I was thinking I have all this different stuff that doesn't necessarily weave together and I ended up just laying a whole bunch of, know, this is good, this is good, they don't have anything, they don't seem to communicate like I was saying. They don't seem to have anything to do with each other. But that book is called Moons, Roads and Rivers and that was, there were things I would change if I did it again.

Mitch Nobis (33:59)
Yeah.

Yeah.

David J Bauman (34:15)
But I was looking at the stuff that I'd written over the course of like 20 years at that point, what I thought was half decent, some of it published in journals and whatnot, and what I thought was worth sharing. I couldn't figure out how to hang together. And I thought, well, I have all these moon poems and have all these poems when I'm driving. And I've lived on, here in Pennsylvania, the Susquehanna River ⁓ covers a massive amount of area, especially since there's the West Branch, the North Branch, and then the two branches meet.

which is where I live right now, just south of where they meet. But I lived up on the North Branch for a while and I grew up on the West Branch before I moved out to Indiana. I have all these river poems and so it just, the idea of Moons, Roads and Rivers came into my head.

Mitch Nobis (34:45)
Very cool.

David J Bauman (34:55)
Looking back at it and thinking, hey, this all hangs together because there's a certain imagistic mood about it, I would love to see more books on a variety of things because I, it's like, I don't, I don't do all the same thing in one day.

Mitch Nobis (34:59)
Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I feel like for a long time, I am no scholar. wish I had sometimes I wish I had gone that route and did the PhD and all that stuff. But I'm, you know, just I'm but a mere K-12 teacher who does, you know, developed all this on the side. ⁓ Yeah, I'm not sure what the right era is. But I feel like there's an era where poetry was kind of just like, here's the last couple of years of this poet's work. And

David J Bauman (35:09)
You know?

I'm a mere librarian who's heading that way.

Yeah.

Mitch Nobis (35:33)
You still you still end up with a theme though, because like our lives have seasons, you know. And I feel like again, I love the thematic books. I am not putting that down. I'm just saying that's not a thing I excel at. So I think I am more drawn to books that just feel like a season of that writer's life. So I think that's how I my brain works, you know.

David J Bauman (35:36)
Mm-hmm. Right. Agreed.

Yeah, well, hopefully. I'm sure we have just encouraged a bunch of people to do that because we are so persuasive, I think. You've got.

Mitch Nobis (35:56)
I'm looking off.

Definitely. Let me give you a word

of warning about the prize system though. The contests are not going to love it.

David J Bauman (36:12)
No, have to find a way to make them think it's all in one theme. I hate to say gaming the system, but there's some extent that you're doing that.

Mitch Nobis (36:18)
What is this?

Well, mean, but that happens though, right?

Because like, so this book, my book that we've been talking about here, The Size of the Horizon, ⁓ is at its heart, my oldest manuscript. I have three manuscripts. Well, not one book and now two manuscripts. ⁓ But I put this one together and was shopping it for years and it was semi-finalist, a finalist. Like it was really exciting. Like this thing's gonna land. And then it never landed. And it didn't land and it didn't land. And it stopped being a semi-finalist. I'm like, they're the same poems that you all love.

David J Bauman (36:46)
Hmm.

Mitch Nobis (36:52)
years ago. But I didn't stop writing in that time. And so long story short, fast forward, it's about a year ago right now, maybe a little over a year ago, last summer, guess we had 14 months. I blew them all up. like, well, I've got, you know, three different I just put all the poems out, you know, you know, the whole the whole scene of like, we all put this on social media, like the poets put together a book, you've got every poem out on the on the table. And I slowly like,

David J Bauman (36:54)
Yeah.

Yep, I've done that.

Mitch Nobis (37:22)
let them congeal. I did try to keep so the size of the horizon really is still at its heart the original book, like that's the only one that I kind of protected, but I cut a ton out, reordered, did put in some newer material as well. But really, I kind of let them all find each other. Back to what you were saying with your ⁓ like moons and driving and just kind of let them find each other. And that's kind of what I did. And now I've got a book in two manuscripts that do each have their own identity, you know.

David J Bauman (37:37)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

I love

that, let them find each other. So it's often the way I write a poem as well. I don't know where it's ending when I start it usually. It's a discovery. Not to make it sound mystical or anything, but it feels like that when you're writing it.

Mitch Nobis (37:54)
Yeah.

It does.

I've said it in other interviews. like, I'm the farthest thing from a woo-woo person you're ever going to meet. Like, am not like, ⁓ you know, horoscopes or any of that. But like the writing process really does have that wonderful element of mystery and discovery to it. And I'm the same way I to a fault. Like my I email myself my thoughts before I forget them all the time. So my inbox is just tons of fragments in one line.

David J Bauman (38:07)
you

Mm-hmm.

yeah.

Mitch Nobis (38:26)
Most of them, they go nowhere, but every now and then I'll grab one and I have no recollection what the actual idea was. But like you're saying, there was an image in this line I found in my email from seven months ago. And I'm like, well, that's interesting. And then it ends up being something totally different than whatever I had in mind back in February.

David J Bauman (38:33)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's a... I guess the muse works in mysterious ways, we could say. How's that?

Mitch Nobis (38:48)
Yeah, yeah. You really you understand

where ideas like the muse came from, right? Like if you write long enough, like I get it. I get it. Some of the some of these I have feel like I did not have a big role in them. You know, like this just happened.

David J Bauman (38:52)
Yeah.

I think William Stafford had said something about being a poet doesn't have anything to do with talent or genius, but an ability and willingness to

listen in on something bigger than you that's already happening. And then Mary Oliver, she had a craft book, like the writer's handbook, was that it? Was that Mary Oliver? I think so. And she talked about the muse and she said, it's an interesting thing if you keep showing up, eventually your muse realizes you're serious about this. then so the muse shows up too. It does kind of work that way.

Mitch Nobis (39:13)
Mm-hmm.

I think so. right.

Yeah. ⁓

David J Bauman (39:34)
Well, How do people get hold of the size of the horizon? Not the actual thing, because that's a lot to ask of people. But the book that they could get their hands on from Match Factory Editions.

Mitch Nobis (39:44)
⁓

Match Factory.

Yeah. Match Factory Editions is the publisher. So mean, you know, obviously your easiest bet is just to jump online and search for Mitchell Nobis, Size of the Horizon, Match Factory Editions. Any combination of those will land you there. Match Factory does distribute through Ingram. So if you like to support your local independent bookstores, which is always my favorite route, you can waltz in and say all of those words to them and then say Ingram, because they like to hear that. That will make it make sense to them.

David J Bauman (40:11)
Excellent.

And then if people want to see the basketball hoop, they can look at mitchnobus.com and find more about your poetry and prose as well as teacher writings that you have in there and various other things.

Mitch Nobis (40:17)
Yes.

Yeah,

I have to bucket things in my brain. I don't do teacher essays and whatnot anymore. But yeah, there is a book out there that I ⁓ coauthored with some other people on how to teach writing. So yeah, we contain multitudes.

David J Bauman (40:37)
Excellent.

That's right. There's more than one thing we do in a day as we said, Well, Mitch, thank you so much for joining me on this podcast. I'm really glad that we got a chance to read together and I'm honored to get a chance to read some of your work and talk to you about

Mitch Nobis (40:52)
Man, it has been an absolute joy. Thank you so much for inviting me in the first place. And thank you for the great conversation. thank you for speaking of honor, like honoring me by reading my work so wonderfully. It's a really cool feeling to be a guest on this show.

David J Bauman (41:05)
⁓ thanks.

Well, thank you so much, Mitch. And you take care of yourself and we'll see everybody else next time on In Three Poems.

Mitch Nobis (41:15)
Thank you.

David (41:18)
That's a wrap for Episode Two. The poem For All by Gary Snyder was presented as published in the Gary Snyder Reader, Prose Poetry and Translations, 1952 to 1998, Volume One, published in 1999. And we thank CounterPoint for permission to use it. Listen next time as we chat with poet Grant Clauser from his book, Temporary Shelters, published in 2025 by Cornerstone Press,

Follow in three poems on Instagram, Facebook or blue sky and listen on your favorite podcast app or at in three poems.com or the in three poems channel on YouTube. Thanks again for joining us for a conversation in three poems.