Common Sense, America 250 and Erasure Poetry with Crystal Simone Smith

In Three Poems, the podcast where poets and poems talk among themselves. This is Season 2, episode 3.

David chats with Crystal Simone Smith, author of seven books of poetry and nonfiction, most recently, Common Sense: Addressed to Today’s Citizens of America, published by Beacon Press (September 2025),  and upcoming Ghostwoman, Arising.

Poem 1:

"Induction" from Crystal's book Common Sense, read by David

Poem 2:

“Loose Ends” from Crystal's upcoming book Ghostwoman, Arising, due out in November. 

Poem 3:

“Cry Me a River,” was from Roberta Beary’s 2025 collection of haibun called Crazy Bitches, published by Macq books. We thank Roberta for her kind permission to share her poem on the Podcast.

You can learn about all Crystal Simone Smith's books on her website at CrystalSimoneSmith.com.

Music licensed through Soundstripe.

Code: JQEBU6547CH0DYBF

Transcript

Intro David (00:00)
Hello, I'm David J. Bauman, and this is In Three Poems, the podcast where poets and poems talk among themselves. This is season two, episode three.

David J Bauman (00:10)
Today we're talking to Crystal Simone Smith, who has come out with a recent book of poetry called Common Sense, addressed to today's citizens of America, an erasure Welcome to the podcast, Crystal. Thanks for being here.

Crystal Simone Smith (00:26)
Thanks so much for having me.

David J Bauman (00:27)
Let me ask you, maybe some of our listeners don't have as much familiarity with Erasure poetry or blackout poetry. I know

I'm sure it's been being done for much, much longer than people know.

what would you say maybe brings you to the erasure form of poetry versus say some of the works you've done before focus a lot of on Japanese forms of haiku and tanka. What drew you to erasure?

Crystal Simone Smith (00:53)
Well, I started out as a free verse poet and I was very drawn to free verse. you you're probably gonna ask me about a a poet that that I'm very much i inspired by and that would be Lucille Clifton. And so when I started writing poetry, I wasn't really well read. You know, I I I had this sort of ability to just sort of express myself and and be lyrical and write poetry, but I wasn't well read and well well versed on poetry.

David J Bauman (01:13)
Mm-hmm.

Crystal Simone Smith (01:22)
poetry at all. And so Lucille Clifton was very accessible accessible, right? And she sort of spoke to me in a way that, you know, she's talking about trauma. She's talking, she's using poetry as a tool, as a vehicle, right? To sort of put some of that baggage down. And that's what I was drawn to. So I was a free bourse poet. I was also, prior to being a poet, an art major. So my undergraduate degree is in studio art.

visual collage. And so that for me that that wasn't too much of a leap, right? To to to to move from you know linear free verse poetry to to visual poetry, which is really what it is, right? That is blackout and an erasure. So it wasn't that much of a leap for me. But yeah I think

I'm pretty versatile in in that way. So and I like to move in and out of forms. I like to weave in forms. So once I've I've written enough reverse and I feel like that that particular genre has served me well or that form has served me well, then I I move on to something else. And I was introduced to Haiku and Japanese forms by Lenard D. Moore, who is a prolific African American figure.

David J Bauman (02:21)
Mm-hmm.

Crystal Simone Smith (02:40)
in terms of those genres. And I was introduced to it, loved it, dived head on you know, head first into it, immersed myself, did the daily practice, all the things that you need to do to sort of hone in on that genre and and sort of master it. That's what we we would call it of course in Japanese forms. How do you master this? And so yeah. Big time.

David J Bauman (03:03)
I mean that got competitive back in the day.

Crystal Simone Smith (03:08)
Right. And so moved to that and then And then I was well, what about what about moving further into different different subgenres or forms? And it it just so happened that it was COVID and people were taking to the internet because you couldn't go anywhere, you know, you were all we were all isolated. And so people were taking to social media with blacking out text and and

David J Bauman (03:25)
Mm-hmm.

Crystal Simone Smith (03:33)
you know, erase do it use an erasure, not really knowing. I th I think it was not it was by happenstance. They didn't know what they were doing, but they they saw the brevity. They saw that you could quickly say something, you know, prolific or profound and just, you know, get a get an immediate reaction. And so I like that and that's when I started to play around with blackout. Blackout poetry is something that I think, like you said, it's a sort of precursor or pre writing.

David J Bauman (03:39)
Yeah.

Crystal Simone Smith (04:03)
Right. You you you hey let let's let's play around with this. Let's do something with this. We as poets often use it when we have writer's block. And so you're like, I can't really write linear, so I'm just going to like black out something and create a new narrative and then that'll be the point. And I was playing around with that and it I really immersed in it. And I and I think that that's the key to to the success with anything but

David J Bauman (04:03)
Mm-hmm.

Crystal Simone Smith (04:29)
particularly writing is just to the immersion. And once I did that, I obviously that rendered Dark Testament. And after that, I went back to Blackout a little bit, tried to do a couple of different projects with Blackout and erasure was just the next sort of step, right? It it was a natural progression. And I said, well I've done this, so let's move into erasure. And that's that's how common sense came about.

David J Bauman (05:00)
And what I love about the erasure as compared to I think the poem Oscar Grant was from the book that you just mentioned, right? From Dark Testament. And I think I read that one on the Poetry Foundation website and it was in Poetry Magazine. but with that one, you don't see the source material because it is blacked out.

Crystal Simone Smith (05:07)
Dark Testament

David J Bauman (05:20)
And so that has a different effect. and part of that might be wondering well, what is what is the source material? And do I need to know that? Or, you know, because there are multiple meanings, I think you can read that from multiple points of view. from perhaps the police officer's point of view, with the victim's point of view, and it may depend on what.

baggage you bring to it you know, was that something that you that you intended that that it that people would read that differently depending on whose eyes were on the work at the time?

Crystal Simone Smith (05:51)
I don't know if intention was the process at all. it particularly when it comes to audience. I was writing for me. I I was using that text to express what I wanted to, and the beauty about erasure or blackout any visual form is that you can take a text that exists and you can create whatever you want. So the passage that

David J Bauman (05:59)
Right. Yep.

Crystal Simone Smith (06:17)
Where Grant came from, which is from Lincoln and the Bardo, written by George Saunders.

It it's a wonderful book. and historical fiction, experimental. But you could take that passage and I could give it to you or anyone else and it would be a con entirely different poem. So that's the beauty of of visual poetry is that you have an existing text and you bring you to that text. And or what whatever's happening with you or you know, whatever you want to express at the time. And so so yeah, that's that that

David J Bauman (06:26)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

And that's

with Erasure, this is written with sort of a strikeout kind of font, so that the original text is there, but with it being struck out and then the words left on the page arise up out of the text.

So you get to see how it was originally written and get a grasp a little bit of of how it became what it is and and what the what the writer in this case crystal Simone Smith is doing as she she pulls the the text up out of it and instead of saying more about it maybe I should just jump in and read the first the the first piece and

it's called induction, but of course it's from Thomas Paine's introduction to his pamphlet Common Sense, as he's basically trying to convince American colonists to join the the revolutionary cause

and so the TRO is crossed out and it's instead of introduction, it's induction.

Perhaps a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right. A long and violent abuse of power. It matters too the good people of this country are grievously oppressed.

Individuals worthy of not local but universal lovers, and the natural rights of all mankind, to whom the doctrine of independence is now presumed. A performance for the public, a production that is unconnected with any sort of reason and principle. Wow.

When you can look at what the original words are there, and how you subvert it by erasing erasing some of those words, it's actually delightful to read.

you you get the multiple meanings going on with it. What drew you to

to making this about Thomas Paine's writing.

Crystal Simone Smith (08:55)
Yes, absolutely. So and and I I I'm gonna try to be brief about this because I I feel like I continually tell this story. But but I I was teaching a a lid course at some point, American LIT course, and I thought about where to start. When you're designing a curriculum you say, where to start? You know, you can start here, you can start with Walt Whitman, you can start wherever you want. And the big sort of anthology that I had of American

David J Bauman (09:05)
okay.

Crystal Simone Smith (09:24)
And Lit started with those foundational documents. So most of our early American writing is political writing. It's the foundational documents because obviously they were trying to establish a nation. And wonderful writing. You know, Thomas Thomas Paine was a brilliant writer. Thomas Jefferson was a you know very prolific writer. And they needed to be. They really needed to be in order to convince the inhabitants to.

David J Bauman (09:27)
Mm-hmm.

Crystal Simone Smith (09:51)
to to seek independence. So I thought this is interesting. Let's include this in the curriculum. And so I included Thomas Paine as a reading in that curriculum, his his his pamphlet Common Sense. As I started to read it, I had to sort of think about okay, how does this look today to students today, to the inhabitants of you know the citizens today? We're no longer inhabitants and citizens of today.

David J Bauman (10:17)
Right.

Crystal Simone Smith (10:18)
It was interesting because I had to think about how how much transference has happened from then to now, right? We wanted no monarchy. We wanted freedom and independence and liberty and all of that. But at the same time, if we can look over the last two hundred and fifty years, that has all been very hard fought for, just like the freedom from from the king of Britain, you know.

That's all been very hard fought for. And so you think about it and you say, okay, well, what is this idea of equality and independence and all people are created equal? And this sort of it's theology, it's whatever you want to call it, that's being you know, sold to us, but at the same time, there's this understanding, underlying quiet understanding that oppression.

is is continually happening, right? The impression that Thomas Paine, had so much, you know, he was indignant about it. He was, he was, we can't have this and we don't want it. That very oppression, he was willing to obviously transfer that to certain groups of people in this country women, enslaved people, black people. So

David J Bauman (11:14)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Right. Right.

you at at the very best almost you could say for him, well, you can't you're fine, you're gonna be fine. But what about these other people that you know they they hate that term privilege, But he doesn't give a thought.

Crystal Simone Smith (11:45)
Yeah.

David J Bauman (11:51)
for the women, poor people, black people, enslaved people. Right.

Crystal Simone Smith (11:56)
Indigen indigenous people. Yeah.

And and and that's the thing. He is a man of his time, right? I agree with that. He's a man of his time. He understands that white men who are landowners have this privilege. And that's specifically who he's talking to. The all is not necessarily everyone, right? Because everybody is not considered a full citizen or a full human, really. So the all is not everyone. And and that and that's

David J Bauman (12:07)
Exactly.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Crystal Simone Smith (12:24)
interesting. I should say that Thomas Paine was a Quaker and he did write, essays and you know sort of denouncing slavery. I'm I don't think that he necessarily agreed with that. You know, but that's not I think he his his goal at that point was to separate the two nations, right? And the two nations are both ruled by white

landowning men. And that's specifically who he's talking to. I don't even know if the contradiction resonated with him.

David J Bauman (12:58)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. and I think it's interesting that you chose induction. I thought, hmm, induction is an interesting word because it can be a lot of different meanings there. It could be a ceremonial sort of like an induction ceremony where we're we're putting you into this position or this change. it

could also be about reason.

but there's also this thing that came to mind because I love to cook. And

There is this inductive heat, the pan itself, the colonies, what will become the United States that is creating its own heat that's gonna be, as you very rightly said, we've still battled for all these things ever since. No King's rallies or not.

you explained a little bit about it. was there a particular passage in there where the words you wanted to focus on kind of rose up out of the page for you that made you want to to to go after this as turning the entire document into an erasure.

Crystal Simone Smith (13:56)
Right. I d I don't know that it was a particular passage and I don't know that the hypocrisy did not start from the very beginning in the in the reading that you just gave. It it it was almost there from the very beginning. This is a document that is unread by most people. y you're engaging with it now and we're having a conversation with it now, but it's unread by most people. It was a document

David J Bauman (14:16)
Mm-hmm.

Crystal Simone Smith (14:24)
purpose right it serves purpose it established our nation but if you go back and you look at it you go this is this is not or at least whatever the creed is that that he's establishing we are certainly not living up to and it it certainly was you know this sort of isolation

David J Bauman (14:33)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Crystal Simone Smith (14:49)
of of groups of of human groups that that he was directly speaking to. What I did like more than anything about this document is that it was labeled common sense. This is a time if you if you read the document in its entirety, and you can because the

David J Bauman (15:01)
Mm-hmm.

It's there.

Crystal Simone Smith (15:09)
It's all there. It's it's just the the what's illuminated is the narrative that I have created, but it's all there for you to read. And this document is, well written. I mean it is just, you know, this ongoing pamphlet of vitriol and you know, indignation and and all of these things. admonishment of this king and all of these things that are happening.

but it's called common sense and he's talking to like he says, the common people, the common folk, right? Archaic, you know, the king's language. All of that is happening. And for me, the term common sense was so interesting because I'm like how we use that in modern times is come on. Common sense Yeah, you sh this is this is your moral compass.

David J Bauman (15:36)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Common sense is not so common, you know.

Crystal Simone Smith (15:59)
This is what you should think. This is this is this is just basic, right? You know, you should have this basic moral compass and and that should just be it, right from wrong, right? And that's how we see it, but that that's not how that that was viewed back then. And yeah, I I think the term common sense really drew me in because he wanted the inhabitants at the time to say, let's think about this.

In a very simplistic way. Do you want to live under monarchy or do you not want to live under monarchy? It's going to be sacrificial. You're going to we're going to have a war. People are going to die. All of these things are going to happen to form this nation. But common sense says you don't want to live this way. You don't want to live under a monarchy. which, if you think about the parallels of today, is is very interesting.

David J Bauman (16:27)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Right,

yeah. Yeah. the irony that he could not predict, right?

Crystal Simone Smith (16:56)
Or I you know, I don't I think because the way the nation was established and and what was happening, as I say he's a man of his time. I mean, I don't think that Thomas Paine could predict, even though he should have been able to do that, that women would fight for their rights, that there would be a civil war and enslaved people would be freed, that they would then fight for their rights, that if you put this in a document and say all men are free, everybody's going to expect freedom.

David J Bauman (17:12)
Mm-hmm.

Crystal Simone Smith (17:24)
Everybody's going to expect human rights. Everybody's going to say, if you said for all, we assume this is what you meant. Yeah. And so that that I don't think he could foresee that. And that and that was part of the problem.

David J Bauman (17:33)
For all. Yeah.

you know, liberty and justice for all, you know. Did you mean that or didn't you mean that? so yeah, and so common sense takes on that double meaning as he's thinking about

I suppose the reasoning, like you said, but now we're looking at through our lens.

Crystal Simone Smith (17:57)
Yeah

David J Bauman (18:03)
Mm-hmm.

But that doesn't mean that they wanted an uneducated person to vote. and I'm glad we're talking about this book, because I do pe I do want people to pick it up. And people will I'll put links down in the show notes. but they can get it from Beacon Press.

Crystal Simone Smith (18:07)
That's maybe perhaps all right.

David J Bauman (18:20)
or from Penguin Random House, or, you know, from your favorite bookstore. easily.

Crystal Simone Smith (18:26)
I should say now is a very good time to get it. We are in the semi

David J Bauman (18:34)
Yes.

And so now we're at the two hundred and fiftieth and also just, you know, honestly, politically, everything that is going on, and not just even in our country, right wing changes throughout Europe, it's where Brexit came from, you know. it's yeah.

Crystal Simone Smith (18:54)
Absolutely. Not just here, America. It's not just here.

David J Bauman (18:57)
and I love that you had a way of interrogating the text that brought something else up out of it It was a joy to read. But you chose for your poem something from your next work that's coming out soon. Tell us about that. Or tell us about the next book, or just jump in and read the poem and then tell us about it. Whatever you prefer.

Crystal Simone Smith (19:14)
Okay, that that

is a wonderful segue.

I will say before I read the poem that what what you'll hear is a lot of the subjugation that that African Americans in this country experienced, that women in this country experienced over those 250 years. you'll you'll hear some of that in childhood trauma and and all of the things that we experienced. And so yeah, that that's a very good segue. So I will

read from Ghostwoman Arising and that is my haiku journey. We we call it a haiku journey. It's a practice. It's usually a maybe a daily meditation practice. If if you were a practitioner, you maybe write haiku daily. it is one of those things. I I should say haiku is is deceptively hard to write. And so we

David J Bauman (20:05)
Mm. It's not just five

seven five. And often it isn't even five seven five.

Crystal Simone Smith (20:13)
Right? It's deceptively hard to do. And so like the pra the practice of it makes you obviously better, makes you it makes it makes a difference. But yeah, so this is we we call it our haiku journey. So this is ten years of my writing of haiku and haibun which is also a Japanese form of prose and haiku

Together. And so I'm gonna start with a a haibun from Ghostwoman and it's called

Loose Ends

When we moved south, my mother was offered the low rate of minimum wage by small business owners still bemoaning the loss of the Civil War. She never masked her disgust, only adjusted her budget. Evenings when money was down to coinage, she'd hit the convenience store to purchase single cigarettes, one for bedtime, another for morning coffee. When she was killed in a single vehicular accident,

I didn't request a police report. I chose to dream up my own ending. In my worst moments, I recalled her penchant to swerve while putting out a butt. When standing above her grave, I've said a thousand things. Fourteen years gone like ash. There was literally a black president. Stricter laws placed on smoking. Nowhere in public.

And the police have gone entirely rogue. They strangled one man to death for selling singles to folks. After the marathon, mistaking a cloud for a mountain.

David J Bauman (21:58)
Wow. Beautiful. And you sort of foreshadowed that a little bit when you talked about the single cigarettes, because that's the first thing I thought of was him selling cigarettes and that somebody would die for just doing that act,

But the idea of of buying singles, you know, and partly just because you're you're God, you're forced by your budget to do that. First of all.

Crystal Simone Smith (22:22)
And we forg and

we forget a lot of the nation's wealth was built on tobacco in this country. And so that's a lot of this nation's wealth of and and slavery. So there's a history of of smoking in this country.

David J Bauman (22:25)
Yeah. yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Crystal Simone Smith (22:36)
I was an adult when she died. all of this time has passed and and you've been gone and all of this has happened, right? You know, I mean, in her time frame, I I would not say at all my mother was a one issue voter. She was not, she was a Democrat and my father was a Republican.

David J Bauman (22:44)
Yeah.

Crystal Simone Smith (22:54)
He was a one issue. He was a black Republican, believe it or not. He was a one issue voter because he was military. He was retired military and he cared about pensions and he cared about how, Republicans promised to take care of military vet veterans. She was not a one issue voter, but she very much cared about smoking. And she wanted smoking to to to be something that she could do anywhere. She could do it in the store, she could do it at the grocery store, she could do it anywhere she wanted. that

David J Bauman (22:55)
wow.

Hm.

Mm.

Her own personal rebellion, perhaps.

Crystal Simone Smith (23:23)
That is her personal rebellion. And so, she cared about many things, but smoking was a big thing that she cared about. So, you know, when when Eric Garner died and and that was the cause, I I thought so much about her and about her habit of smoking and about just, you know, not even living in this country, working for whatever wage you're working for.

And not being able to buy a a pack of cigarettes 'cause it's expensive, right? And so you gotta buy one cigarette here and one cigarette there. And so much of that came back to me. And so this poem loose ends sort of encapsulated all of that.

with linear poetry and when you're writing, free verse or prose and haibun is a combination of prose and haiku, there is this sort of freedom to to really utter things that that don't come natural. And I would say as a poet,

David J Bauman (24:15)
Yeah.

Crystal Simone Smith (24:17)
I think my my friend Alice I I have a friend who who who's a writer and Osborne and she calls it Windexing, right? Like you know, you're making the you're taking something and just completely that that may be blurred, that may have, you know, smudge on it, and you're bringing out the complete clarity.

of of what's there. And that requires you to go to hard places and utter hard things. and that and that's what I am always been drawn to when it comes to writing the line. is the ability to just just say it and and spill it and

hopefully it resonates with folks and it's universal and people can, take what they they can from it.

David J Bauman (25:01)
what is there about that tension between the prose part where you're tempted to be able to, I could explain the the haiku part right

Crystal Simone Smith (25:09)
Yeah, so that that is very tricky because I think that people naturally want to, or particularly poets want to naturally close a poem. That that is just we want to bring it full circle, right? We wanna either leave that door a little open, we wanna s slam it shut, but w whatever, you know, approach you wanna take. You wanna close that poem. And people don't understand with with haibun that's not the goal, right? The goal is to

They need to connect. The haiku and the hayboon need to connect in some way, but what you want is you want to create a tension where it shifts away from, but still connects, right? And that's what happens in haiku. You have three lines and you have one line that's doing one thing and the other two lines doing something else. And they come together. but the the two lines coming together with the one line, it's two parts to a haiku, create a tension.

It creates a tension and and and that is what gives you that moment, that that very important aha moment. And so that's what that's also what you're doing with haibun. You want that haiku to somehow connect, but you want it to shift away and create a tension. So when I say when I'm talking the entire time about, you know, my mother and what's happening in the world now and

how smoking laws have changed and all of this has changed. And then I go down and my haiku says, after the marathon, mistaking a cloud for a mountain. That does not talk necessarily about smoking at all. But also you can almost see how it's relational, right? Because you know, you're you're really tired, you're not in your best shape after a marathon, and you look up and

you you may see there's a but it's actually a cloud, you know? And there's of course clouds when you're smoking and and so so it shifts away but it also connects.

David J Bauman (27:10)
this discussion is inspiring. This is something that I may try now. which is part of the fun of this.

Crystal Simone Smith (27:14)
It's funny. It's fun. You can try.

David J Bauman (27:16)
You chose a poem by Roberta Barry to read as our third poem. you want to tell us a little bit about that? Or do you want to just read it?

Crystal Simone Smith (27:25)
Well, I I'll talk just a second about it. and and I will because this is like another poet like Lucille Clifton who I was really influenced by when I first started writing haiku. and it was because she could go to dark places. And that for a long time when I was a student of poetry or you know, maybe an MFA candidate,

David J Bauman (27:27)
Yeah.

Crystal Simone Smith (27:46)
you you know why you're writing poetry. You know there's something to uncover. You know there's trauma. You know there's all these things you want to say, but then it's like, how do I say that? People will know. People will, you know, judge me. You know, all of these things. And once you give yourself permission, and I I have to actually, if if I'm honest, I have to credit Claudia Rankin, who was an instructor of mine in an MFA program, who who's like

David J Bauman (28:14)
What a wonderful

opportunity that must have been.

Crystal Simone Smith (28:16)
was and and you know, and it was like y you gotta go there. You gotta go there. And why you not going there? You know? so she helped me to to to get to that place where I I could say things that that that were very uncomfortable. and so when I first encountered Roberta's haiku, which she I think she wrote haibun a little later, she started out very much as a haiku poet.

I thought, wow, she's not just seeing the world or the natural world and recording what she's seeing and you know, giving these sort of responses to it. She's actually invested. She she is using this form in one of the most, significant ways that you can in order to to combat trauma and and to deal with it and and to rationalize things that are happening to you.

David J Bauman (28:53)
Mm.

Crystal Simone Smith (29:07)
that that are out of your control. and so I was very drawn to her as well. So that's why I chose this haibun But I'll go ahead and read it.

This is from her collection of haibun called Crazy Bitches. Cry me a River. Threading the Web Slanted Strips of Sunlight. The time he asked me for a hundred for the rent. The time the bill collector called looking, and I said I have no idea. The time he led his young wife and her kids out of the basement window.

with suitcases at midnight, the time the landlord rang and said your father seemed so nice, how could he? The time his girlfriend, the one he lived with but didn't marry, said she cured his gambling. The time my mother said she cured his gambling. The time his friend swore your dad doesn't gamble anymore. The time his latest girlfriend said he's so good

He doesn't have any bad habits, and I didn't say anything, not then, not even when she lost the house. The time he called and called and I didn't pick up, the time I erased his contact info, the time his buddies from Belmont crowded the casket, while the pipes played Danny Boy, and the priest asked for a donation, a few hundred dollars to cover it.

And that was the last time. Splitting open the empty nest, Blackbird song

David J Bauman (30:52)
Mm-hmm.

And I'm a big a big fan of birds. So I always love a poem that ends ends in that,

Crystal Simone Smith (30:58)
Yeah.

so magnificent, you know, I love them. They are the most vulnerable creatures yet. You're not gonna touch them because you can't fly. You know. They have have the advantage, you know.

David J Bauman (31:09)
Yeah. Right. And

And they don't give they they don't, you know, they

they can fly. So there's there's there's a release there at the end of that piece that isn't necessarily a release from all the dark stuff in the poem.

But it's still somehow satisfying. Yeah. Good stuff.

Crystal Simone Smith (31:29)
Absolutely.

So I think we both have in common that that use of of the form or poetry in general to sort of mitigate or or or deal with trauma, you know. it's a good use of the form. I think a lot of people use it for that way.

I would say for me it is a tool. I think if you need a therapist, you should certainly seek a therapist. I've seen people misuse poetry in that way. and it becomes

David J Bauman (31:57)
Yeah. Where it's not it's not

just the vomiting out of what everything that's wrong.

Crystal Simone Smith (32:02)
Yes,

yes. And you become very close to it and attached to it. and for me, you know, as a person who teaches Zen, it's letting go. You know. Once it's there, it it

you've perched it. It i it's letting go and then you move on to something else. And and for me I I really like engaging in different forms. As you can see I'm I'm a rangy poet. I move through all different forms and I really enjoy that because I don't want ego to be a huge part of my process. And it can become.

And and maybe maybe we move on to other things. Maybe we write on you know I I write, you know, about enslaved people or fugitives slaves. and and I and I'm outward with with with my engagement with poetry.

That's important.

David J Bauman (32:51)
Well, if

you go back to the bird the the birding thing, that's in a sense therapeutic. But it would also be therapeutic, I suppose, if I went out there and just screamed at all the birds so that they flew away. But but that also is not the purpose. And you could do that with poetry, I suppose.

Crystal Simone Smith (33:03)
Yes.

That is one of my hallmark, you know, more more known haiku that I that I wrote years ago when I was raising my sons. I had little boys. And I I'll just can I just say the haiku. It it's spring break, my boys screaming at blue jays.

David J Bauman (33:23)
Absolutely, sure.

Crystal Simone Smith (33:34)
And the re and then I I sometimes I tell my students and they go, they go, I don't get it. And I go, you have to understand if a blue jay, a beautiful b blue jay lights and is in front of you, the last thing you want to do is scream. You want to scream. You want it to you know. but they're little boys, right? They don't care and you know, and so you know, they got a lot of energy. So but that's that's a pretty known haiku of mine.

David J Bauman (33:48)
Ha ha ha.

Well, Crystal, thank you so much for being a guest and thanks for sharing your poetry and Roberta's poem as well. Like I said, I'll put links in the show notes that people will be easily be able to follow. and as we are celebrating, if that's the word,

Two hundred and fifty years. commemorating, recognizing, sorry, I don't mean to be cynical.

Crystal Simone Smith (34:24)
There needs there

needs to be a recognition and there needs to be you know, all all of it. We we need it all. You know, we need the truth, we need, you know, the historical account, we need it all.

David J Bauman (34:30)
All of it. Well said.

Yeah, and poetry

is is this is an awesome vehicle to to approach it with. thank you for giving us that opportunity and thanks for being with me here on In Three Poems.

Crystal Simone Smith (34:46)
Thanks so much.

David (34:47)
For In Three Poems, I'm David J. Bauman, and we've been chatting with Crystal Simone Smith. She and I read from her recent book of eraser poetry, Common Sense, addressed to today's citizens of America, published by Beacon Press. Crystal also read loose ends from her upcoming book, Ghost Woman Arising, due out in November, and you can learn about all of her books on her website at Crystals Simone Smith.com.

Our third poem was Crimea River by Roberta Beery from her 2025 collection of Haibun called Crazy Bitches, published by Macq Books And we thank Roberta for her kind permission to share the poem on the podcast. In Three Poems, episode three of season two comes your way next week with poet and editor of Whale Road Review Katie Manning. Listen on your favorite podcast platforms, including Apple, Spotify, even YouTube.

Just to name a few. And if you like what you hear, give it a like or a share, or better yet, down in the show notes, hit that link that says text the show and send us a text or a voice message. We'd love to hear from you.