Spark Birds and Poetry with Katie Manning

We talk with poet and editor Katie Manning about poetry and Red Tailed Hawks, as well as being disappointed by our heroes. 

Poem 1: 

"On the Origin" by Katie Manning, read by David

Poem 2: 

"At the Bird Rehab Facility in Vermont" Written and read by Katie 

Poem 3 

"Family Portrait with Time Travel and Dirty Wings" by Sally Rosen Kindred, first published in Whale Road Review (see link), read by Katie. 

We thank Sally Rosen Kindred for permission to read her poem. 

Music by Brian P. Kelly: https://www.youtube.com/user/wbarreguy

Other Links:

Katie's Website, where you can find her books as well as news and information about her work. 

Sally Rosen Kindred's Website, where you can read selected poems by Sally and learn more about her book Where the Wolf, Book of Asters, and others. 

Katie's Bio:

Katie Manning is the author of Hereverent (Agape Editions), Tasty Other (Main Street Rag), and six chapbook collections: How to Play (Louisiana Literature Press), 28,065 Nights (River Glass Books), A Door with a Voice (Agape Editions), I Awake in My Womb (Yellow Flag Press), Tea with Ezra (Boneset Books), and The Gospel of the Bleeding Woman (Wipf & Stock). Her poems have been published in many anthologies and literary journals, including American Journal of Nursing, HAD, The Lascaux Review, New Letters, Poet Lore, Relief, So to Speak, Stirring, SWWIM, and Verse Daily. She has received the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, The Nassau Review Author Award for Poetry, and The Thimble Prize, among other honors and nominations. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review. 

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Katie Manning (00:00)
At the bird rehab facility in Vermont. The songbirds are declining like credit cards. The woman stating facts in the aviary reminds me that morning doves make milk, secreting the liquid from their throats for their young. The cardinal mom dive-bombs us twice, then returns to nest building like nothing happened, but my heart is still flinching fast.

The barn owl's face looks wood-carved, like we could chop down an oak and find this face among the rings. Her name is St. Louis. All of the birds here are named for their places of origin. The red-tailed hawk is twenty-six years old. I don't remember his name, where he's from, but I smile when I realize that in this place I am Phoenix,

Intro (00:48)
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 four, and we'll hear the conclusion to that poem by our guest today. Her poems have been published in many anthologies and literary journals, including the American Journal of Nursing, New Letters, Poet Lore, Relief, Stirring, Swim, and Verse Daily, among many others. She's received the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award,

The Nassau Review Award for Poetry and the Thimble Prize, and numerous other honors and nominations. She's the founder and editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review, and here we are in conversation.

David J. Bauman (01:30)
Katie Manning is the author of the book Hereverent from Agape Editions. And Tasty Other from Main Street Rag. And also six chapbooks I'm not gonna try to name them all off. But Katie, thank you.

Katie Manning (01:45)
wouldn't

try to name them all off either.

David J. Bauman (01:47)
Well, thank you for being on the podcast. I I was saying before we started recording that it feels like we've been talking forever, and this is really the first time we've talked in real time. I we've been Instagram buddies for a while now

Katie Manning (01:57)
Yeah, I know it's strange.

David J. Bauman (02:01)
I was trying to remember where exactly we first started talking, and maybe we just had some some mutual poetry friends. I'm not sure. But

Katie Manning (02:08)
way with poetry world right it's like we can

somehow there was a poem there was a bird who knows

David J. Bauman (02:14)
Right. And that's the the some somewhere along the line there was an editor who said that they did not want any bird poems. And I thought, well, you know, birding is one of my biggest joys in life. And those that don't understand it's it's partly because birds are everywhere. Even if you're in the city, I mean there are some great footage of red tailed hawks in New York City. And even if you're not seeing something cool like that

Katie Manning (02:41)
I'm wearing my red tail hawk earrings.

David J. Bauman (02:45)
For a second

for a second seeing you on video, if those of you who are just listening, I thought she was just like putting her hand up to her ear because she couldn't hear me and I thought, no, my mic went out. those are great red tailed hawk earrings. an ad for some app that it played a different bird and and the app showed up that it was a red tailed hawk, and I'm like, No, no, no, no. And

There's the common joke too about seeing seeing TV shows that will show a turkey vulture circling or an eagle and then it has a red-tailed hawk call. Because the red-tailed hawks has such a cool call.

Katie Manning (03:12)
Even

Yes. It

has a better call, yeah. Yeah, TV.

David J. Bauman (03:22)
But our poems

our poems about birds though are always always on the mark and scientifically well researched, I'm sure.

Katie Manning (03:33)
You know, I try. I really do. I've I've been sitting and listening to bird calls, you know, forever trying to figure out, okay, what kind of bird was this that I was listening to and how old and, you know, all that kind of stuff.

David J. Bauman (03:45)
Yeah, that is fun.

but I was never really good at the songbirds. Back in the day when somebody loaned me their cassette, this is how old I am, Baseet Bazeet and B Buzz Buzz started to sound the same because it was all one long cassette of, you know, with the monotone voice saying, you know, green winged warbler or whatever. but when you get out there during the pandemic, I think in particular, when you could get out there

And listen, and they were starting to get these recording apps like you mentioned that you could listen to it and play it back and check like the Macaulay library standard stock calls and see, yeah, that is what I heard. And that's when I've started learning. So now I'm walking the dog, and if anybody hears me, they like, why is he naming birds to his dog? And walking, I'm like, tufted tit mouses over there.

we've got a chickadee in the neighborhood.

Katie Manning (04:36)
I was

just telling somebody last week that my oldest kid, when he was very small, like the first animal sounds he started making, he could do a morning dove. And it was really convincing. And I was so proud.

David J. Bauman (04:50)
so Katie, the way this usually works is if we can stop me from chit-chatting, I read a poem of yours then you'll read a poem of yours, and you chose a poem to read by another poet, at the end of that and

Hopefully I'll keep the conversation on on track. The other poem is by poet Sally Rosen Kindred and we'll give you a chance to introduce that. Let me just jump right in on this one I'm gonna read of yours and then we'll talk about it. How's that sound?

Katie Manning (05:18)
Sounds great.

David J. Bauman (05:19)
So this poem is actually in an upcoming book of yours. so I'll have you tell us about that afterwards. But it's called On the Origin.

I find an old copy of Darwin's On the Order of Species, among my father in law's Bibles and Theology books. And my own laugh startles me in the empty house. We never talked about Darwin that I recall, but of course this well read man wouldn't have been afraid of the church's favorite villain, after Satan and Judas. His faith

was never threatened by thought. I once thought that to be saved was to laugh at science. What a shock to later learn Darwin's sin was observing turtles and pigeons, flying squirrels and bats, and realizing that all things change. I know that I can't keep everything, and that nothing I take will be enough to fill what's lost. But I picked

The crumbling book from the shelf, wrap it in tissue, and tuck it into my suitcase to save.

Thank you for letting me read this one. You know what? I have to tell you, I have started I always said I was going to, and I've read bits and pieces and n read about Darwin's book on the origin of species, but now I'm actually reading the book thanks to this poem.

Katie Manning (06:48)
I always love

to ask students what does this poem make you want to do? I think poems do have that they're exhorting you to something, right? So that makes me happy

David J. Bauman (06:57)
Yeah.

this one is part of a collection where you thinking a collection that you said you've just sent out. do you think it was one of those that you're working on a series of poems and then realizing, these kind of hang together as a collection, or did you write it because you were writing poems about?

That certain thing.

Katie Manning (07:17)
this poem is actually the spark poem for the new collection. So I there was a lot going on, as you might be able to tell from from the poem. But yeah, it was the one that got me writing through the experience of very sudden and tragic loss of my parents-in-law and and processing that and

David J. Bauman (07:21)
great. Well

Katie Manning (07:38)
Not even a year later, my spouse was diagnosed with cancer and we went through surgery and chemo. And so it was it was a stretch of time that was just impossible. and that had me thinking a lot about

David J. Bauman (07:48)
Mm-hmm.

Katie Manning (07:52)
what is comforting and what is the role of faith and how people try to comfort you in ways that maybe aren't comforting. But what I found comforting was looking at, you know, like watching a bronchoscopy or looking at, you know, x-rays or watching animals and, you know, and thinking in these ways that got me, you know, looking at nature or thinking about science. That was so comforting.

David J. Bauman (08:00)
Yeah.

Katie Manning (08:21)
in a way that nothing else really was.

David J. Bauman (08:24)
The bird thing of course I relate to, but but the the actual x rays or watching how a surgery is done. You actually found that comforting, which is which is f that's that that is cool.

Katie Manning (08:33)
Because it's fascinating, right? You get into the

like, you know, so my my spouse that we're just gonna we're gonna go fully in here, you ready? So my my spouse had testicular cancer. And the thing that fascinated me, and of course I wrote a poem about it, is that that cancer, if it travels, it always travels up the same path that the testes descend in like in infancy.

David J. Bauman (08:41)
sure, sure.

wow.

Katie Manning (09:01)
That's wild, right? Like that's that always. It's like they always know where to look. And I'm like, how many things in life can you even say that about that this always does this thing? That's fascinating, right? It feels like it you can almost get excited about that for a minute. And then you're like, wait, but that's that's actually cancer in my spouse's body. But it it takes you out of it for a minute. It allows you to marvel at something.

David J. Bauman (09:02)
Yeah.

That is.

Yeah. But it's Yeah.

And I'm thinking it it probably feels a little bit like when you don't know what's wrong with you for a while and then you have a diagnosis. That can be comforting. and I suppose maybe maybe it's related to that that that at least you know there's a name to the thing and there are procedures and things to do once you have that name.

Katie Manning (09:36)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

David J. Bauman (09:48)
but maybe also gives you something to work with, some some hope as well.

Katie Manning (09:53)
Yeah, I mean I I think it can be all of that. It it can be practically useful or it can just be interesting and give you a break from the part that's heavy.

David J. Bauman (10:01)
Yeah. Yeah.

Well said. So tell me about

the collection then is is going to be more like Herverent. I I remember there were plays on words with names. one of the poems I think

That had it would have like an abbreviation of a Bible character's name or Ba for sheep, things like that. so in this one it's more about the loss and about science as part of the journey too, to understanding things, maybe?

Katie Manning (10:31)
I I think that's that's kind of when I describe it to people, as I suppose I should do for you now. I can. I I think that the you know the root of it is writing through grief and loss and and sort of interacting. I I think of it as kind of in conversation with Darwin, but also just

David J. Bauman (10:37)
You don't have to. You don't have to.

Katie Manning (10:56)
expanding out from there and and looking at the world and processing grief in in this way of sort of you know animal observation questioning all of that kind of wrapped up together but I think there's also

I cannot get away from being playful, I think, but like I think of writing poetry as play, like we're gonna play with some language now. So so I don't think it's a collection that is heavy necessarily. I mean it it deals with heavy things, but I think I hope that you know the poems are

David J. Bauman (11:27)
Gotcha.

Katie Manning (11:33)
are using language in a way and are using are are interacting with interesting things in a way that leads people through and I I don't think it'll leave people feeling hopeless. So that's good.

David J. Bauman (11:44)
No, it I I'm sure not.

but yes, that's something that you're very good at. And I think it also comes out in the next poem that you're gonna read.

Before we get to the next poem, I wanted to talk a little bit about I came out of a very evangelical religious background.

when a lot of people think about the the whole it's one or the other. It's either

evolution or creation, you know, and I didn't grow up in a church where, yeah, both of those things are true.

I don't know, was your background there there were bits of it in here where you you talked about Darwin say being up there with with Satan or Judas.

Katie Manning (12:24)
Yes. That was that was how I understood.

absolutely. I I I just had in mind, you know, here is this villain, right? And he made up this stuff that misled people about, you know, and and it so

It was such a wild thing to then actually engage with Darwin's work. and you know, I mean, I I had gotten past that by the time that I was reading him, but I had never I had never actually read his his writing. you know, like you said, I had read about it, but but to yeah, to actually engage with, well, what were his ideas and and to to sort of just be so

just surprised and amused, I guess. If if I can take some amusement from that, that that that would be offensive to people. that seeing, you know, I the things that would make me marvel are things that are threatening to other people. That's wild, right? yeah, that's

David J. Bauman (13:23)
Yeah, and that's that's

a conversation I've had with people before too, that you know, I I s I say I hesitate to use for me. I I tend to just say, well, I'm not really a believer. because I don't like I don't like the term atheist because I don't like to define myself by something I'm not. That seems unfair. but to say humanist feels limiting, especially when I'm so interested in ecology and birds and ecosystems and how we're all how we're all actually part of nature.

And I have this, drive in me that that feels like a lot of our problems in modern times have come from from maybe the the themes that we were taught about when I was in middle school where you're reading Jack London, it's man against nature and and I've become a little more Taoist about things than it's not necessarily man against nature, it's one natural creature, man, figuring out how to deal and survive.

in nature that he has, you know.

Katie Manning (14:23)
Acknowledge that we're part of nature. Yeah. Yeah.

David J. Bauman (14:24)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so

that's that's that's kind of fun. And I I tell people, I said, it doesn't mean that I can't wonder and be in awe of things, you know. I said, I I certainly am. And that feels spiritual, however you want to define that.

Katie Manning (14:34)
Yeah.

And I I think,

yeah, I mean, I think sometimes we're very obsessed with labels in ways that maybe we don't need to be. because I think, you know, I have I I have preached at my church before, which is very strange to me, but I have. and I get asked to do this maybe once a year. So I I feel like anytime I do this, I end up talking about Keith's negative capability. I this is how this is how I approach scripture. It's how I approach

David J. Bauman (15:02)
yeah.

Katie Manning (15:08)
you know, life that I I have come to a place where I have to be comfortable sitting with the questions. that it it's not that everything is a riddle to be solved, you know, sometimes you have to just stay with the questions. and I I think that's okay. And I think that's something that we don't necessarily need to be threatened by. Yeah.

David J. Bauman (15:28)
Yeah, agreed.

And so as this next poem's title will tell us, you so you actually did a little volunteering at a bird rehab facility?

Katie Manning (15:38)
I wasn't volunteering. I actually I so I attended this is so delightfully dorky and I love it. Sarah Sarah Anwin runs Poet Camp and she does all sorts of different workshops and things. And so one of the things that she organized a few summers ago was an Emily Dickinson-themed poet camp. And so we went for a week.

David J. Bauman (15:44)
Great.

Katie Manning (15:58)
And we went to, you know, her house and we went to the library that houses her, you know, a lot of her written work. And we went and did, you know, just kind of a couple other things that seemed like in the spirit of Emily. And so one of those was to go to the VINS Vermont Institute of Natural Science, I believe, is the Latinum. but it's they have a bird rehab program there. and so we just got to go and enjoy and look at the birds and we did kind of a

David J. Bauman (16:18)
Yeah.

Katie Manning (16:26)
educational chat and they you know showed us some different birds and it was amazing. It was amazing.

David J. Bauman (16:32)
Very cool. Well she definitely has,

you know, the you know

she has multiple birds in her poems I'll say that. I was trying to think one that she called was it a chorister? I forget.

Katie Manning (16:43)
Maybe.

David J. Bauman (16:44)
and another one about I think it was a robin that cleaving a a worm into yeah. Orioles I think well so this one then it's called at the Bird Rehab Facility in Vermont and this was originally published in only poems. Is this part of another collection too?

Katie Manning (16:48)
There there are a lot of birds. A lot of birds around that.

Yeah.

This so this is part of my new collection for staying long. It is.

David J. Bauman (17:06)
so this is part of the same. Wonderful. Wonderful.

So when when we know who the lucky publisher is that will get to publish it, let me know and we'll put links out there on social media at that time so people can can order and stuff.

Katie Manning (17:20)
thank you. Yeah,

I I just sent it out to two places for the first time, finished editing it a couple weeks ago. yeah. It is. It is. It's a fun place to be. It's exciting place to be.

David J. Bauman (17:26)
Woohoo That's a good feeling, isn't it? S

Katie Manning (17:33)
like this has been true of me. I you know, any collection that I've had, it's like, yes, this took me 10 years to write. And that's been with every collection, which sounds weird or it sounds like I'm lying at some point, I think, because it's like, I how did you take 10 years to write each of these? But of course they're layered on top of each other, you know. I've got two ways we're going along at the same time.

David J. Bauman (17:50)
Right, of course. And and you're you're busy

being a mom and working full time and you're you're reading submissions probably for the literary magazine all the time. getting the next issue ready. I mean how many times does that publish a year? Whale Road Review? Four? I was gonna say it's not

Katie Manning (18:03)
It's four times. We have two different reading

periods. So we're actually open now as we are in the time of recording. Yeah.

David J. Bauman (18:09)
good. S so this is

now this is gonna be airing sometime in July. So is it will it still we will be closed by then. The the next one will open by when?

Katie Manning (18:15)
Okay, so we will be closed by then.

So we read in June and December.

David J. Bauman (18:23)
Okay, so Keep keep it keep it on your radar whether you use Duotrope or or chill subs or what to look for your submissions.

Katie Manning (18:29)
I'm a I'm a Google

Calendar reminder person myself.

David J. Bauman (18:32)
There

you go. All right. Well, is there anything you want to say about the poem or do you want to just jump into reading it and then we'll talk about it?

Katie Manning (18:39)
I feel like this is one of those poems where the title kind of preps you to hear what is about to happen. So I think I'll just jump in.

David J. Bauman (18:45)
I think so too.

Okay.

Katie Manning (18:48)
At the bird rehab facility in Vermont. The songbirds are declining like credit cards. The woman stating facts in the aviary reminds me that morning doves make milk, secreting the liquid from their throats for their young. The cardinal mom dive-bombs us twice, then returns to nest building like nothing happened, but my heart is still flinching fast.

The barn owl's face looks wood-carved, like we could chop down an oak and find this face among the rings. Her name is St. Louis. All of the birds here are named for their places of origin. The red-tailed hawk is twenty-six years old. I don't remember his name, where he's from, but I smile when I realize that in this place I am Phoenix, also bird, and as all the birds here know.

We're never just the same when we put our hollow bones together again. But whoever said we wanted to rise back up unchanged.

David J. Bauman (19:51)
metaphor in this is just so rich. the multiple metaphors if declining you had me at declining like credit cards. Because first there's the word declining, of course, which when you think of how many billion birds actually in the last ten to thirty years that we've lost a lot of grassland birds and song birds.

Katie Manning (19:54)
Thank

David J. Bauman (20:11)
A lot of it having to do with loss of native habitats and such. But like credit cards, you can't get much more relatable than that.

Katie Manning (20:21)
You know, and

this is one of those poems that I don't necessarily feel like it wrote itself, but it was like I didn't know where we were going. And it just unfolded, you know, as I as I drafted and and then of course, you know, crafted it, but it it sort of yeah, it sort of unfolded itself.

David J. Bauman (20:29)
I love that.

Right.

Katie Manning (20:40)
the

starting with declining like credit cards, I that was one of those things where I went, that's weird. I was like, we'll see. We'll see where it goes, you know. I was not, you know, and I I feel like I've learned to let myself be weird. And you know, it doesn't always stay, but but sometimes it does.

David J. Bauman (20:46)
He

it it takes it from you as a as a human and the as the poem gets deeper into the birds, because then you you move on to the milk in the here's a weird fact you didn't know that a morning dove produces milk.

drunk through the throat, not just that, you know, like a lot of birds will regurgitate the baby's food. And you I think know more about this this one than what I do. I didn't really think about this, I think, until I read this poem and I looked at it. I'm like, yeah, that's true.

Katie Manning (21:28)
say in the poem that she reminds me because I did know that fact at some point because I love Morning Doves And it was like, you know, hearing it again, I just hadn't thought about it in a long time. I went, what? How weird is that? It's so weird.

David J. Bauman (21:34)
Yeah.

Yeah.

And usually

the birds that I've gotten dive bombed from the most are the robins around our neighborhood. If they choose to put a especially a nest like over the light near the door or something, and then you have to use another door for a while. but but cardinals almost as big as a robin. That that can that

Katie Manning (21:59)
Cardinal

mom, yeah. She was like, I'm coming for your heads. You stay away from my nest, yeah.

David J. Bauman (22:06)
So you go from your personal experience and you're getting deeper and deeper into the things happening with the birds and learning about the way they feed their and protect their young. And then I love the the wood carved appearance of the Barn Owl They do have they do have that sort of and usually most barnals that people have seen are either a painting or some sort of carving or something.

It does have that it does have that look. So I think that's a wonderful description. I I love the find the face among the rings. And then when you go to the places, the metaphor goes a bit deeper because I think I f I felt like you're going f internally to the outward and then back to the internal by the end of the poem.

when you realize you come from Phoenix.

Katie Manning (22:52)
such a it was such a lovely thing to stumble into to that to have that thought.

David J. Bauman (22:56)
That's delightful.

a lot of people don't think about they think I think of the Phoenix story just, you know, one cycle when really it's an over and over thing. it burns down to ash and then is reborn again and burns down to ash and then is reborn again and it's a it's over and over sort of thing.

Katie Manning (23:06)
Yes.

David J. Bauman (23:16)
And so that line, whoever said we wanted to rise back up unchanged.

is like an acceptance, a recognition and acceptance of things as you go. It's it's a lovely poem. And not just because it has birds. I suppose we could have found some kind of mammal for that editor to write this about, but we we work with what we have. And it's hard not to. Once you start noticing birds

Katie Manning (23:29)
I appreciate that.

Yes. I know. You can't you can't turn it off. They're amazing.

There's actually a poem that is coming out in the next issue of Whale Road Review that is about your spark bird. you're gonna love this poem.

David J. Bauman (23:51)
Mm.

Well, you know, I I

don't know if I ever told you that mine is actually a red-tailed hawk, was my spark bird.

Katie Manning (24:01)
I love that.

I you know, I feel similarly, like I always noticed birds, but it was I almost feel like every place I've lived, there's a different spark bird. Like I don't settle to, you know, but for certainly until I was, you know, well into my PhD program. It wasn't like I was, I'm gonna go watch the birds. It was like some bird would catch my eye and startle me. And I'd be like, what is that? Like, I have to go find this thing and you know, figure out what's going on.

David J. Bauman (24:26)
Yeah.

Katie Manning (24:29)
For me, I think I was paying attention. You know, I used to watch hummingbirds with my grandparents. So I was attuned to the little birds. And then when I went to Louisiana for the first time, it was about a year after Hurricane Katrina and we went with a youth group and we're like gutting a house and you know, trying to be useful in some way. And one of the things that we did while we were there was a swamp tour. So we're in this boat and going through this swamp, and you know, it's all kind of dark and moody and water and trees everywhere. And I looked across the

David J. Bauman (24:33)
Yeah.

Katie Manning (24:57)
water and there was this giant white bird. And I had never seen a great egret before. And it was like, I just was like, what is that? Like it looks like some kind of prehistoric creature that's just standing over there. And it's so shockingly white in the midst of all the green and you know, brown and like it it startled me. So like I mean in the best way, right? It just shocked me to see this bird. So that's that's definitely one of my spark birds.

David J. Bauman (25:01)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. That reminds me. You did have a little thing that I highlighted when you said all the birds here are named for their places of origin. And I thought, we're back to origin again and origin of species. so maybe a I love when themes play Yeah. And

Katie Manning (25:36)
And that accidentally happened. And they have to, right? I mean you you can't contrive those things and have

them actually work. So

David J. Bauman (25:46)
It's like truth is truth, it finds its way in there somehow or other.

Katie Manning (25:49)
Does, does.

David J. Bauman (25:50)
So this poem also has some wings and some bird imagery and this is by Sally Rosen Kindred.

Katie Manning (25:54)
It does.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, Sally is one of those poets who I loved her work. Like she just she's one of those poets who I I would hate her if I didn't love her

because everything she

writes, everything she writes is brilliant, you know. Anytime I read one of her poems, she'll be like, this is, you it's an early draft. I'm not sure. And it's like

good. How do you yeah?

But she's she's one of those poets for me who I really loved her work. And then I got to meet her at the Glenn Workshop about a decade ago. Almost yeah, around a decade ago. And and she was wonderful. And I so she is now a very dear friend. but I love that she became a dear friend after she was this poet whose work I was like, my gosh, this is so great. It's I always tell my students it's you know, one of the fun things about being in the poetry world is that like your poet rock stars.

David J. Bauman (26:41)
Fantastic.

Katie Manning (26:48)
can be accessible. Like you can actually, you know, become friends with people who you're like, this person's amazing. So yeah, we can correspond and it's yeah, it's amazing, right? so yeah, Sally is definitely a I was this is going to sound like I was trying to make a

David J. Bauman (26:50)
Right.

That you can actually reach out to them and they'll say, Well yeah, I'll be on your podcast

Katie Manning (27:05)
name joke but I wasn't but Sally Rosen Kindred is indeed a kindred spirit when it comes to getting some birds in there and and in this poem she works with her mom when she was young would call her little bird as a as a nickname so she she plays with that here. So shall I read it now? All right.

David J. Bauman (27:20)
Mm.

Absolutely.

Katie Manning (27:29)
Family portrait with time travel and dirty wings. When my mother drank, she cracked time's secrets from her blue chair. Gold ignition in the glass, rolled in the mouth, and her body slowed down, her voice slowed down, her breath drew the pixels on the screen to a silver stop. Her swallow warped the drapes, and I stepped inside her stalled world, hunched.

My dirty wings furled tight, hands out to take the leaves and bones, her emptied plate. I tell you, I was the only thing moving in the room. I was twelve, my knuckles braced the courting air. A messenger, skin bladed by dumb bones, I shook, worn teeth, worn hush, and my mouth parting in terror's small slow-motion bloom.

Forty years on I swing a door into the room where she sits now with assistance, forgetting houses and towns, her words turning seasons to stone. Her bowl steams and on the screen brims with stars. Past her shoulder, the glass frames branches that swim in tulip light. Against belief, against reason, it's May. She looks up and sees me, the only moving thing.

Finds a body I haven't been in years, rose tremble, hard lips and wings, and she calls me by the name I wore petals ago, my first ribs listing. Little bird. Until she sees me, I don't remember where I'm from. She tilts her glass, she's thirsty, says, You've come all this way.

David J. Bauman (29:18)
Mmm.

Katie Manning (29:19)
It just such a beautiful poem. And so many layers and so much, just so much rich language that I feel like I want to, you know, read over and over and kind of chew on for a while.

David J. Bauman (29:22)
Absolutely.

there was a poet friend of mine who used to refer to a good poem like this as a Chewy poem.

Katie Manning (29:38)
it

is. Yeah. 'Cause it yeah, it makes you just wanna sit with it, you know.

David J. Bauman (29:43)
Mm-hmm.

and taking this forty year time travel.

Katie Manning (29:47)
Yeah.

And the the thing, I mean, there's so many things, but one of the things in this poem is just that sense of, I mean, there's the you know, the parallelism, of course, of being the only moving thing and having her mom in a state of not not being able to be fully present or fully aware because she's drinking or because she's you know now forgetting with dementia. and and it's just

David J. Bauman (30:00)
Yeah.

Katie Manning (30:17)
There's something so sad but also beautiful about, being a thing that your mom recognizes in either of those situations, or, you know, especially in the toward the end of the poem where her mom calls her by this nickname that she hasn't heard in so long. So there's still some.

David J. Bauman (30:25)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Katie Manning (30:36)
you know, calling back to who she was, maybe who she's always been. and there's some connection there in a situation that maybe feels otherwise entirely disconnected. It's just so beautiful.

David J. Bauman (30:48)
And and connecting

to your poem that until she sees me I don't remember where I'm from.

Katie Manning (30:53)
Yeah, and that was really interesting. I don't think I had realized that connection until I was reading it like just now.

David J. Bauman (31:02)
See, that's why some

people have asked me on on these episodes. They say, Well, well, should I pick poems that specifically connect? I said, No, not necessarily. I said, Because we'll find connections as we read it. We'll find things. And if we if we don't, we're gonna have a blast talking about the contrasts. So it's there, but yeah, you've got that origin again, whether it's the origin of species and how we change.

Katie Manning (31:13)
Yes, I know. Even if you don't mean to, they're gonna yeah, these phones are gonna talk to each other.

Mm.

David J. Bauman (31:30)
over time, whether it's as species change or as people change. Yeah. These poems are beautifully connected. I couldn't have picked a better trio if I wanted to talk about how they talk to each other and talk amongst themselves, which is is really the sort of thing that fascinates me even when we don't know that we're doing that, that we're in conversation with each other. whether

Sally intended it or not, I as I'm thinking of Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. Wallace Stevens when I think it's a winter scene in that scene when he says, you know, the only moving thing is the eye of the blackbird. And so for her, it's definitely a barren moment and because she's saying, you know, against all reason it's May, against belief. so

Katie Manning (31:56)
Mm.

Yeah,

I

yeah, I love the way poems, I mean they they want to talk to each other, right? Whether we're whether we're doing it or not. yeah, Wallace Wallace Stevens is its own can of worms for me. I loved that poem very much. and then I

David J. Bauman (32:20)
Absolutely.

Katie Manning (32:30)
found out that he said a very racist thing about Gwendolyn Brooks. And Gwendolyn Brooks is like I would die for her. I less like one of one of the dearest poets and one of the most important poets really for my development as a writer. Like she's just and not that I would have been okay with it for him saying it about anyone, but it was I felt especially like, how dare you, sir, you know. and so, so I very quietly

David J. Bauman (32:42)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Of course, he said.

Yeah, I wasn't even aware

of that. That's all right.

Katie Manning (32:58)
Except now telling you, I definitely

took him off of my poetry survey. I just took him off and substituted him with a different poet who is writing in response to Gwendolyn Brooks. And it's like, what if what if we get a you know some golden shovel in here and a little Jericho Brown? So yeah. Which you can totally cut this if you don't want to talk about this on the podcast, but that's

David J. Bauman (33:12)
there you go. There you go.

There you go. Jericho Brown is is lovely.

No, no, no.

Katie Manning (33:27)
It's the thing that

I I get fiery about. I was literally just talking to somebody about this about a week ago. Like

David J. Bauman (33:33)
No, I didn't yeah. It's

i it's it's good to be aware, And I don't mind sharing that with the folks. Well, sometimes, yeah, when they say don't meet not to meet your own heroes, I suppose.

Katie Manning (33:37)
Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes it feels awful to be aware. I prefer it, I suppose.

David J. Bauman (33:46)
it's important, I think, to to discuss those things too. when I talk about gosh, when I talk about Edgar Allan Poe, that's hard.

Because when you part of me loves him, part of me wants to backhand him. when he says in gosh, which which which one of his essays was it? When he talked about the greatest theme in poetry being the death of a beautiful woman

Katie Manning (34:10)
The beautiful

woman. I I've shown that to my students before, just that excerpt. So yeah. It's he's yeah.

And this is something that fascinates me, which might be an entire tangent, but I know we could probably we could probably connect it right back somehow, because this is what we do, right? I I'm fascinated by, I it's not like I try to, cut some writers off and keep some writers in like I'm not doing a conscious judgment all the time. So like Ernest Hemingway, I think is awful.

David J. Bauman (34:24)
Ha ha.

I bet we can.

Yeah. Yeah.

Katie Manning (34:44)
And yet I love his writing and I can read

his writing and sort of separate it. I mean obviously I told you I took him off my syllabus, and I actually I ha I do mention this to students with some frequency.

For me, I i it's something that I think about a lot because I'm talking with students about these things all the time. and I'm just fascinated by what art can I still engage with and enjoy without feeling that sort of I don't even want to look at this anymore. and and I don't have a simple answer for it.

David J. Bauman (35:14)
Yeah. Right.

Again, maybe that's one of those things where the questions are more important than the answers. I don't know.

Katie Manning (35:24)
think that is absolutely true. Good job you connected that.

David J. Bauman (35:28)
Thanks.

but then on the flip side

You've got Walt Whitman I love Uncle Walt, but I also like am very embarrassed by Uncle Walt at times. there was Oscar Wilde on his American tour and I found an article a few years back that had quoted witnesses and and their writings that apparently the two met.

Katie Manning (35:48)
I was just reading this probably a month or two ago. Right? And and maybe not open.

David J. Bauman (35:49)
And k and kissed. S so sometimes your

heroes meeting each other can be better than you expected. The

Katie Manning (36:02)
I that is

so it's so funny. I really was just for the first time reading something about that like a month or two ago.

David J. Bauman (36:08)
Maybe the poets

are are like the birds in that way. They're they're either battling for territory, or you know, predator versus prey, or they're, you know, nesting together, mating calls and all of that. I don't know. There we go. Well, thanks for joining in 300 birds today.

Katie Manning (36:17)
Or nesting together.

Doing fabulous dances. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you, for having me. This is

David J. Bauman (36:32)
It was so much fun. I really appreciate you joining me on the podcast.

I will put links though because your your book, Hereverent is still available. and I'll put your website link, things like that. They're in the show notes. And and give give Katie some love, buy some books, and we will

Katie Manning (36:41)
It is

find the links.

David J. Bauman (36:50)
See you next time. Thank you for joining me, Katie. It was so much fun. Thanks.

Katie Manning (36:53)
Thank you. Thank you very

much.

Outro (36:56)
I'm David J. Bauman. For In Three Poems, we've gotten a preview of an upcoming collection from Katie Manning. You can find all of her books on our website, Just click on books on the menu and you'll see the whole lineup. and our new music, our theme music that we're hearing right now is courtesy of my brilliant husband, Brian P. Kelly. Thank you, Brian. You are the best. In Three Poems, episode four of season two comes your way next week.

With poet and immigration scholar Mai Linh Hong. We're going to talk to her about her book Continental Drift that was just released at the beginning of this month. You can find us on your favorite podcast platforms. And if you like what you hear, You can hit text the show to send us a voice or text message, and follow us for more in Three Poems.