Don't you hate when you write an incredible introduction and you're computer glitches, skips, skoots, cricks and crashes thereby erasing the wizardry you wrote? Doesn't happen when you're writing with pen or pencil - unless you're near an open window during a storm, or caught in a fire. Inks out, Point breaks and no sharpener in sight. Anyone else awoken abruptly having forgotten a dream you intended to write down?

Who out there possesses any quiet passions? What are your loud ones? I like libraries. I also like techno music. You need not shout on the mic for me to hear you. Don't get me right, I like loud ones, quiet ones, ones who whisper and ones who yell. Just be connected to what you say, be imaginative, feel what you feel and no matter how serious things get remember to play.

Are you a homebody? If so what would people say about your body of work if they had the chance to hear it?

Or are you a poem-body? These days I mostly elect to stay home, eat dinner with my family at around the same time every night, then play with my kids instead of going out to an evening event. Right now this is the right choice for me. I don't think twice about it anymore and feel completely present with them loving every minute---that is until they head to sleep of course. And then - well then I must write.

There was a time I would write all day and dream of sharing what I wrote at an evening event. Occasionally I'd get so wrapped up in what I was writing, that the event I intended on attending would pass me by and I'd be left to my own devices, rehearsing what I wrote over and over or muttering to myself in a mirror. I soon learned that going to the event would make me feel better, far better than crossing t's and dotting i's by my lonesome-- regardless of having finished the poem and regardless of getting a chance to perform said poem. I choose to be around the poets. I hope you choose to too.

In this episode we engage in a thought-provoking dialogue centered "A Quiet Passion," a biopic that chronicles the life of the renowned poet Emily Dickinson. The episode opens with an exploration of Dickinson's character as portrayed in the film, revealing her struggles with societal expectations and her quest for authenticity. We reflect on the film's depiction of Dickinson's reclusive nature, discussing how her isolation informs her poetry and ultimately shapes her identity as a writer, exploring the tension between her desire for recognition and the constraints imposed by her environment, highlighting the film's nuanced portrayal of a woman navigating the complexities of a patriarchal society. As the conversation unfolds, we delve into the broader themes of creativity and self-expression, particularly in the context of emotional turmoil. I admire the film’s ability to capture the essence of Dickinson's internal struggles, noting how her poetry serves as a vessel for her unvoiced emotions. Renzo examines the significance of artistic expression as a form of resistance against societal norms, underscoring the importance of honoring one's creative impulses despite external pressures. Feel free to reflect on your own creative journeys and the barriers you may face in pursuing your own passions. We discuss the paradox of recognition and isolation, pondering whether posthumous acclaim can compensate for the lack of acknowledgment during an artist's lifetime.

Keep it Reel.

Spotlights out.

Center stage is his easy chair and he sits in the dark.

Cut the crap, cross town.

Someone shits and it's art.

Flip that handicap backwards to parallel park between work hard and work harder.

Hell, even if no one hears any of this, not one letter, he believes writing it has made him feel better.

And that only in Scott.

Hey, that's me.

Sharing it with strangers, he achieves balance.

So if you're gifted in lifting spirits, try and stop robbin and stop robbing the world of your talents.

So let's not be strangers.

After this poem, every day and night, he chooses to stay home.

It isn't always the venue's fault for ending an open mic or closing its doors.

It's your own.

Uncap your next penissance.

Your work's worth a rebirth, because if you don't want any more doors to close, you need to open yours first.

Real Poets is an audio only podcast that can also be visually read like roses or When a director juxtaposes his or her most imposing reposes with characters, settings and themes composed of thrilling soundscapes, highest of stakes and dreams.

Hosted by a duo of Real Poets about real poets and the real poetry they've written and the films that have been written about them and their work.

Join us each week as we talk to another real poet with something to say and how a real poetry movie influenced them in some way.

Then we each write a new poem inspired by our most recent viewing of the film and share it with all of you.

Well, hello.

Welcome to Real Poets.

I'm Renzo Del Castillo and with me, as always, is.

Raven, where we are real poets.

You're a real poet, I'm a real poet.

And we sometimes talk to other real poets, but mostly we talk about real poets on film.

We leave them reeling and maybe our voices are a little bit lower today because we're talking about A quiet passion.

Cynthia Nixon of.

Well, she's done many things, but of Sex and the City Fame plays Emily Dickinson.

What's the new joint that they have together?

The this and then that.

It's kind of the Sex and the City crew.

Yeah, yeah.

And just like that.

And just like that.

Okay.

And then Jennifer Ealy plays Lavinia Dickinson.

Or Vinnie.

I love that actress.

She was Elizabeth Bennet in the 90s BBC series of Pride and Prejudice, which had Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy.

Amazing.

That's one of my favorite adaptations of a novel.

And then we have Keith Caridin as their father, Edward Dickinson as well.

What did you think of the movie, Scott?

I know you, you seem to have enjoyed it.

I really enjoyed it.

I, I'm going out on a limb and saying I probably like this movie better than I like the poll, like Emily Dickinson.

I, I, I, I, I like this movie as a poetry movie.

I think it just really works to the form where, where the poet is writing in the movie.

And like you see so many scenes of, of writing.

So it felt to me that even if it wasn't as true to the, to the poet's life, the expression of the poems were delivered, were delivered so well in Congress, you know, with kind of the, the filmmaking that it worked for me as a, as a poetry film.

Just, just like it's blanket.

I, I dug.

How about, how about you, Renzo?

I did not, Doug.

I did not enjoy this movie.

Our first split.

Yes, our first split.

I really didn't enjoy this movie.

There's a lot of things to admire about it.

I love the lighting.

Like the old, how do you say, daguerreotype, or like portraits, like the way the lighting is done.

It makes them look like those, that portrait style from back then.

I thought that was very well done.

I thought some of the performances were great.

I just didn't work for you as a film.

No.

I'll give you an example.

Right.

I watched it with my girlfriend, with Gurbet, and she asked me why I didn't like it and I told her, look, let me just replay every other scene in the movie.

I'm angry about something.

Emily Dickinson, you shouldn't be angry about this other person.

Well, I'm going to say something extremely mean.

Emily Dickinson, you are being horrible.

Other person.

You're right.

I'm worthless as a person.

Emily Dickinson.

No, you're not.

You're lovable other person.

Oh, Vinny.

Every other scene.

It was so tedious to me in terms of character development and all that stuff.

So let maybe we need to unpack it a little bit because what I've been doing is trying to.

Why does that trigger me so much like this movie triggers me into dislike.

Even though that it's shot beautifully, there's great pacing, it's very atmospheric, there's a great mood in it.

I think it sets mood really well.

If anything, it sets mood really well.

So I, I definitely want to unpack with you why I'm reacting to it this way.

Right, right.

And I'm hearkening to my first time having watched it where I really liked it the first time.

Set the scene.

I saw it in Queens at the main movie studio studio that I had done, you know, some background work before, some acting work before Silver Cup Studios.

And it was kind of like a. I guess a free, free ticket where I had gotten to see it with a friend of mine.

And after I saw the movie, I couldn't.

I think it might have had.

I think I might have seen a Muppets exhibit right after.

So perhaps I'm conflating the two where.

I would have loved a Muppet version of this movie.

I'm just gonna go, so which.

Which of.

Which of the Muppets would you.

Would you have play Emily Dickinson of the main.

Of the main crop?

Based on what I just said?

Sam the Eagle, obviously.

Okay, interesting.

Now,.

The element that I'm not agreeing with you on is, I guess, the dialogue, the scenes, although contrived, it still played wittily enough to me, where the banter was entertaining, where it played like an Oscar Wilde kind of collection of quotes, where, okay, you know, she's in a scene, but then she has somewhat of a snarky, witty, witty retort that was surprising to me that.

That the language bounced.

Bounced back and forth.

Yeah.

And I, as much as the language, you know, kind of bounced back and forth.

The.

The thing that I'm only coming to now is, okay, if she was such a recluse, how in turn did she become such a sharp critique of society and kind of, like, know how to respond to lots of these different circumstances?

And the movie purports that she wasn't always.

That she was kind of immersed in society and she gradually became more of a recluse.

I don't know if that plays to what her real personality was or not.

I'm not sure.

It's interesting, right?

Because.

So I agree with you.

I thought the dialogue was great.

I just didn't.

I wasn't.

The performances didn't convince me.

I thought the scenes were contrived.

I didn't think that there was, like, a lot of things made sense.

So, for example, at the very beginning, young Emily is juxtaposed with her aunt and she makes fun of her.

She seems to have a dislike for her, but then when her aunt is leaving, she's like, but I love you.

Another person leaves, another person's away.

And I'm like, I just didn't get how she had this attachment to somebody.

She had showed, at least through the movie, disdain.

Right.

So for me, there wasn't emotional connections that validated or explained or gave cause to her Behavior.

So why don't we take a step back and start breaking down some themes.

So as you said, she was known as a recluse.

And I think one of the things that triggers me is she seems to make a lot of fear based decisions.

Right.

I told you I was examining what about this triggers me and her.

I think the movie tries to play it both ways and I don't think it can have it both ways.

In one sense, her slowly abstaining from society can be seen as a rebellion of societal norms that try to repress her because she's a woman and she's not allowed to write.

At the end there's a scene where she's arguing with her brother about the.

Comparing a woman's role in society to slavery, which he takes offense to.

And they have a big argument about that.

But she seemed, you know, she's, she, she stands by her conviction.

She's also presented, but not shown to be somebody who is morally inflexible.

Right.

So there's that.

But to me there's also this fear of death and this fear of attachment because if you get attached, you, you lose something.

So I'm just going to abstain from life so I don't lose anything.

But she, she also says she's.

What she wants is truth.

Right.

So to me it was all of this, these things did not align for me to paint a portrait of the poet that I have admired.

Yeah.

Because if you look at like for example, her use of em dashes are revolutionary.

She's like, I don't want semicolons, I don't want periods.

I want this pause in this breath, in this way.

And I'm going to do it in my way.

I'm going to capitalize all my nouns to give him more importance.

She rebelled against the structures of grammar in that society in her form.

The way she rebelled against what?

Like society wanting her to get married, society wanting her to, to you know, be seen and not heard, not have her own opinions, etc.

So you can see that.

So I don't, I'm having trouble reconciling the rebellion versus fear based decisions and trauma.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, I think we get some of those.

To tackle your last point, we get some of that with Cynthia Nixon's performance.

We get some of the grammatical tricks and some of that other stuff with how she is delivering.

It's like a performance poem before performance poems were even a thing, how they come out of her and yeah, like it feels connected to the page.

That being said from what I've read, a lot of Emily Dickinson's poems were not in her original voice that were originally published.

They were edited by other publications to more fit her voice.

And only recently.

Now, I don't know what that period is of now that it more reflects actually what she said.

I think we're seeing more of kind of.

All right, the filmmaker, what he supposed that some of these poems.

Because where they might have come from in her life.

You.

You said she seeks truth.

And I don't think when.

When we say she seeks truth, it's the same thing as her seeking honesty or.

Yeah, honesty.

It's.

She.

I said.

I said she says.

I said she says she seeks truth.

There was a disconnect for me there too.

So, so.

So I think she seeks the authenticity person around her, but she.

She almost like she wants to be surrounded by interesting people, if that makes sense.

Like she's bored by.

By her mother.

Like.

Like she actually, like, is.

And she.

She wants almost people that she disagrees with or people that maybe run counterintuitive because that fuels her, I guess, writerly nature, that if she's around that.

That's where some of these other things are coming from.

It's.

It's interesting.

I. I know we might watch this.

The.

Shakespeare's.

The anonymous about Shakespeare, whether Shakespeare wrote the poems with which he did because, like, in order to tap into some of the things that a writer writes about, do they have to go through it?

And we're not talking positive or negative, but do they have to experience it for themselves or do like, where is she funneling these observations from at this time?

He has her set of views, I guess.

And then it is coming.

You know, she's.

She's counterpointing.

She's point.

She's counterpointing.

That's where it started.

It loses me a little bit, like, all right, had she lived enough life to be able to write these things without.

Before she became a recluse.

Yeah, I agree with that.

Interesting how we're.

Yeah, we're.

We're totally.

It's.

I'm.

I'm giving her more credit or I'm giving the filmmakers more credit.

I think then it.

It's.

It doesn't slay from what I've read about Emily Dickinson necessarily, but that in turn still worked for me as a.

As a film.

So I, I agree with you in.

In the sense that that's another disconnect for me.

You know what I say?

I'm like, whenever I'm on a podcast, or whenever I'm talking about my book, or whenever I'm talking about poetry or just us, you know, talking shop, I'm like, you need to go live life and experience so that you can grow your imagination and do it.

If she's a recluse, how does she find that truth?

But again, she became more and more of a recluse towards the end of her life.

It seemed that she had a very rich imagination, at least in the way the filmmakers portray her, to the point where she.

Who judges others for lapses in morality, falls in love with a married man who.

Who.

She just likes his sermons.

And I think the reason she fell in love with the preacher was because he liked her poems.

And she needs this validation.

I never found her.

It's interesting.

I never found her to be bored with her mother.

I always thought she was looking for her approval, her love, her attention, because her mother suffered from depression.

So I see this in her, and I know I was mocking those scenes, but she's always.

She has this violent outburst, right, because she's so frustrated with the way things are.

Like, you can see she's a brilliant person, right?

You can see she's funny, but society allows her no outlet for this.

There's a scene in the movie where they say, oh, we can be here in the house, or we can walk through our modest garden.

And that's her world.

Where can she engage in these conversations and allow her imagination, her wit, to bloom and to connect with others?

No, she just does it with her.

Her family.

But it also seems she just.

She has.

And she says it.

She has a desperate need for approval, and she's looking for it anywhere.

And when she gets it, she's like, oh, I love this person.

And I don't know if it has any basis in reality.

Well, she had the one friend, right, who's the one that got married first.

Oh, God.

Her name is.

These names.

Vling Buffam, I think, right.

Who felt like a.

A compliment to her very.

Or, yeah.

Like, she was.

They were totally in the sink, and she almost, you know, upstages her.

But then she, I guess, folds into societal norms by getting marriage married.

And then.

And then that was where some of her spirits started to leave.

But she was introduced, you know, they.

They were.

They were a duo together.

That's where, like, the woman that the creature is with at first, too, that the T scene where.

I mean, she is completely bored by her.

Like, it just feels like.

Like, because she doesn't go out and do all these, you know, I mean, that woman.

Yeah.

And she plays.

I don't know if she's bored by her as much as she's offended by her.

Right.

Like, yeah, I guess I take it as a Borg.

Yeah.

Like, she.

She's like, oh, I just.

I don't.

I abstain from.

From this and that.

It's like.

I thought it was only from.

From alcohol, but, like, no tea as well.

It's like, would you like lemonade?

It was.

It was a very funny scene.

Right.

But.

It has that same relationship she has with her.

With her aunt.

I. I imagine with this piety which she abhors, but so inflexible in her judging.

Now, I am no proponent of adultery.

Right.

When she has the issues with her brother.

But she seems to judge others extremely harshly because she lives in ideals.

Right.

I should be this, I should be that.

To me, she lives under the tyranny of should, which makes her incredibly unhappy.

But I don't want to downplay the fact that she has.

She is enslaved by society to the point that even if she gets published, she doesn't have control of how it goes out to the world.

Somebody will modify it and change her meaning.

Or at least she mentioned that it was as great a crime as anything else.

Like, you're changing my meaning, you're changing my words, you're taking my identity.

I finally get out there and now you're manipulating it to be something that I am not.

And I am tired of not being anything that I want to be.

I. I really love that scene of when the.

I guess the publisher comes to her house and, you know, reminded me of a workshop, a poetry workshop.

Sometimes, you know, when somebody's giving you a hard critique and, you know, like, it's hard to even.

You know, what.

How does one person know better than any than you when you've written it?

Sometimes it.

That.

That it rang true of how.

Yeah, idealistic she.

Or how stalwart she is with her beliefs in that scene, it seems I keep getting mad that you're a little hung up on the contradiction of the brother having the affair, but her also going after the.

Going after the preacher that.

No, I'm not.

I'm not hung up on that.

I'm not hung up on that.

Contradictory.

No, I.

What.

I.

The contradictory thing is she knows what it's like to desire a married person.

Right.

And I can see her, but she didn't act on it.

And I can see her judging her brother for acting on it.

Him being married to someone that she cares about with another married person.

Right.

But he acts on it.

And that was.

That's what she finds her.

I found that she was envious.

I find that, like, to me, like her anger doesn't come from, like, I don't think she's in touch with what she truly feels and what she.

When she does come close to it, she represses it.

She bathes it in anger or something else.

But I think she.

I think she is, at least as she's presented in the film, a creature of envy, of her inability to.

To do the things that she want or express herself, express herself the way that she wants, maybe because she is a woman, right.

In that society.

But I do find something, I guess.

She's able to express herself on the page.

She's able to express herself within the poetry, but not act on it.

I guess she's not able to, to put it into action.

Right.

And her work is incredibly restrained and always full of metaphors.

She never, her poems never yellow.

Her poems never scream.

There's no emotional release in her poems.

I mean, if you, if you read through them, it's always very.

It's under the surface, it's hinted at, it's there, but there's no.

Right now we can, when we read our poems, I can, I can go into some of that, but I find her to be that way.

Yes.

Well, how much was her.

I.

When she gives the poem to the preacher.

I love that.

I love, I love that.

It was a good scene.

It was a good scene.

Like, they're not spoon feeding you a little with it.

And it's, it can be interpreted in my mind a couple of ways.

Like, like that's her kind of playing with religion.

Like, all right, you, you're.

You're in this.

But is this poem going to get a rise out of you?

You know, like, and, and like.

Yeah, she's able.

That's, that's her expression.

She's giving to him rather than being able to ever say it or, or, or act.

Or act on it.

I mean, it is a, it is a bold move.

Are we to say, though, that is the filmmaker saying some of her health problems that come is from that restrained passion?

Like, the first time it happens, I wasn't sure what happened where she falls on the stair stairway.

I couldn't tell if it was sexual or, or what.

I didn't know if she, she just, you know, like like it was pain or pain or pleasure when she first comes in and falls.

Was, was that before or after she yells at her, at her, at the, at the family's help.

Oh, because she has that outburst and that's eventually tied into her disease.

I thought it was right before, you know, do you remember there was kind of two, two times.

And then of course, there's, there's a scene where she's visited by a figure in the shadows and like that.

I'm curious to your interpretation.

She has the vision that, the vision.

Whether that was all right, that's her restrained passion of like it's happening.

Kind of like she wants to be taken by some mysterious figure in the night.

Possibly.

You know, I don't know how much reading you did.

There's some, there's some literature on that.

She actually had an affair with her brother's wife.

Right.

I think they hinted at it.

Maybe.

I, I, I don't know.

Like, maybe I was, I wouldn't have thought that if I hadn't read it after.

I just, you know, like, because it's not gendered.

It's not, it's just a mysterious shadow.

So I thought it did.

And it might be the, the baggage of, of Cynthia Nixon playing Miranda, who, who is, you know, who has romantic relationships with, regardless of gender and sex in the city.

So maybe that carried over for me, but I.

They have this very intimate conversation where the wife or her sister in law says, I do my duty.

Right.

When it comes to, like, your brother is tender and he's sweet, but I do my duty.

So there's no attraction from her to him.

And she is confessing that to Emily.

And I don't know, there seemed to be more of a tension for me and in the way that they spoke than just friends or sister in law.

And her anger at her brother for hurting his or for, you know, sullying the relationship with this person to me implied that maybe, I don't know if they had a relationship, but that she felt some sort of attraction or inspired some sort of passion in her.

Right.

I think another person who inspired passion was Ms. Buffin, but it was, I think that was more of an intellectual equal, like, you are what I can't be.

You say the things out loud that I say.

Writing it, writing it down.

Right.

But when it's time to, when it's time to live it, you repress yourself and you go off and you say, like, no, I'm going to submit to this, because that's my lot in life.

And that and she rejects it.

She's like, I will go to your wedding, but I won't wave goodbye.

Let me know if she's okay.

Okay.

Right.

She.

She.

She has these moments of just push and pull and push and pull, which I think is reflected in the lighting because you have.

She's often half lit, right.

Like.

Like bathed in Kiris Goro.

Like a Rembrandt or something.

Right.

Which equals that duality which you also find in Emily's poems.

I think.

I think the director.

Let me take a step back.

So Cynthia Nixon is a scholar on Emily Dickinson.

Right.

Which is one of the reasons the director, Terrence Davies, wanted her to play Emily.

Terrence Davies is also a big fan of her.

And I think that the way that he shot the movie is more true to Emily Dickinson's poems than what I found there.

Like, I admire that.

I found, like, those long pauses in between scenes reminded me of the EM.

Dash, for example, when I'm surrounded him.

No worries.

It reminded me of the EM dash, for example.

Some of the.

The way that it was shot.

Some of the.

The way that it was done reminds me more of.

Of her style of poetry.

Also, the.

Do you remember the scene where the family ages and it's those funeral portraits.

Yeah, right.

That's the first time they age from.

There's a different actress, different actors playing.

The children.

The children.

Right, right.

The Dickinson children are changing today.

I thought.

I thought that.

That's brilliant.

And it's.

That was really good.

It's pre AI, I guess, like.

And it's a better way than AI it reminded me of the Michael Jackson.

Video, which is better than any AI the black or white that we have now.

That was peak special effects.

Right?

So.

So there's a morphing.

And it really, like, works that.

All right, you're taking.

And you're finding similar features between those.

And that's a testament, I guess, the makeup department and some of its visual.

Effects, they do it at the end.

They do it at the end.

When you see the portrait of the death portrait again, of Emily Dickinson, and it morphs into the actual portrait of Emily Dickinson.

Right, right.

There's a fun with playing with the duality, too.

After the morning, they're all in black.

She then at that period is when she commits to just wearing white.

And it's like, all right, white is a symbol of purity, innocence.

But it's also.

He's still rebelling in some way of like, all right, we're all mourning, but I'm.

I'm going to Wear white.

I'm going to rebel in my way.

I'm going to not align myself with what you expect of me.

But I wanted to ask you something because we've talked around it for a bit.

Cynthia Nixon's delivery of Dickinson's poems.

I found it to be flat but emotional.

Again, a lot under the surface.

It's very even in the way that she reads it, but a lot under the surface, which I think aligns with the style of her poetry.

How do you think Cynthia Nixon's delivery, I mean, of the Dickinson poems affect their emotional resonance?

It worked for me.

It felt more, more authentic to, yeah, to the poet.

I mean, it was some, like, came.

You could.

I felt that this character wrote the pieces and then actually delivered it.

Yes.

There's no, there's no real bells or whistles, but sometimes.

Did she talk directly to camera or, like, it could play as interior monologue even though they're being said out loud?

So, like, that aspect, I, I appreciate.

Yeah, they, they, it felt organic to me.

I, I, I, I, I was, I was taken by them.

They took you out a little bit, you're saying?

No, I found it to be.

I think the flatness was good for me.

Right.

I, I think it was flat but filled with emotion.

But she read it in a bit of a flat way.

And I think that when juxtaposed with the highly emotional scenes, they were being set over the death of her father, for example, her funeral.

They were incredibly effective.

Right.

So for me, it worked.

Those were probably my favorite parts of the movie.

But I just think it's interesting because are we being true to the story or is the story being true to her in these things that recreate her form, her rebellion, her.

I'm still trying to decide for myself what this film is trying to say.

Like, is it a, is it a feminist film?

Right.

Is it more radical and it's quiet than louder biopics or biopics?

I don't, I don't know yet.

I'm still, I'm sitting with it still.

And whether I enjoyed it or not, in, in that sense, it doesn't mean it's a, it's a bad movie.

And I think the mark of a good movie is one that sits with you for a while.

And this one's sitting with me for a while.

I just have something in me that, that rejects some of it, if that makes sense.

Yeah, Yeah.

I wrote a couple quotes down.

Pleasure first and then excuse from pain.

I thought that was a theme that, that resonated throughout.

There's the interplay, too, of death and immortality and all that.

That's what a lot of her.

Her work tends to.

Tends to be.

And it's kind of like, all right, we're watching the.

The photographs.

And like, photographs are something that's immortal as well, that.

That they don't age.

But we're watching them age.

But, you know, photographs at each time.

Photographs, I guess, live on forever.

And yes, her poems do.

As.

As we know from to now, they.

They have lived on and taken on a new life.

The.

What was another quote, Neither congenial nor trivial.

Living as a woman.

Give me something pressed from truth.

And that is poetry.

Yeah.

All right.

That's what you had.

I. I wanted to ask you a couple questions, too, that this kind of brought to mind.

You know, your.

Your feelings.

I thought we talked to this one on legacy.

Like.

Like, yes, you know, she.

She wanted her poems to be around, but I don't know if she lived to them.

Many of them actually being published, most were posthumous for.

But for you, is.

Is.

Does that.

Does that way greater to have a body of work that has been appreciated in your lifetime versus having just created a body of work.

I don't.

I'm not even there.

What if what the movie represents is true?

It makes me feel great sorrow for her because she couldn't even enjoy the act of creation while she was alive, right?

So for me, do I wish.

Do I want my work to live on after me?

Of course, we've talked about the legacy.

What's left for my family, even my ego, right, to be known as a great poet or as one of the greats.

But if I'm not enjoying creation, then what am I doing, right?

Like, she's miserable in life.

She's thought of as miserable in death or having suffered greatly in death.

Like,.

I just.

If I could wish anything for her, it would be some release.

And to answer your question, It's almost the way that I feel about poems, right?

Like, once I write the poem, it's no longer mine.

It belongs to the world.

It belongs to whoever is reading it, because they're going to give any meaning tied to it.

She wanted recognition in life.

I don't know if this vindication after death is something that she would have felt good about.

I'm sure she would have felt good about being recognized, but she would have wanted it to be done in life, I think.

And for me, whether I'm recognized in life or death, I would want to enjoy the process of creation more than being recognized while I'm alive or being recognized while I'm dead.

Because it doesn't matter to you once you're dead.

Yeah.

I mean, you don't get to see anybody enjoying the, the work or, or what they make of it.

Yeah.

What about you, bud?

Yeah, I mean, I, I previous to this, to having children.

You know, those were my, you know, poems being my greatest creations, where anything that I put on a page.

Yeah.

The process as well as the performance of them.

And I guess I've learned to, you know, some poems that I've worked so long on to be performed just one time.

And that is, that moment was, was so incredible for me.

I mean, we, you know, we worked.

I've delivered a poem at a funeral for, for a fraternity brother of mine that had passed away.

And you know, that in turn, being able to be there for those people that were grieving somebody, that was not, that was a special, special moment.

And I, that poem, I'm never, you know, performing that again or people don't have to read that in another, another thing.

But it was just for that one time.

Being able to hear it now, kind of having children kind of with another on the way.

Tick tock.

That turns the legacy thing a little bit differently because the essence of me and my, my, my wonderful wife are, are in the child.

So that they in turn can also, you know, echo us in, in, in, in their life and their, their children's lives with just elements of, you know, their creation, their both artistic and, and life creations.

So I, I still value both of them, you know, being able to create.

And I, I, you know, like, yeah, the being able, the process, you know, how excited you are when you finish something, you know, you want to just.

Yeah, of course.

Who told me to though?

You know, after you write something, wait like a day before sharing it with a loved one that might have a critique that you're not ready to hear or just, that just, just exist with the joy you had with writing it and then, all right, you gotta edit it and that sort of stuff.

Maybe give it, give it a day.

So, yeah, I, I, I, that I, I legacy.

The other question I wanted to ask you too, if you don't mind, is at what point I want us to, to find at time, what is it that we love about Emma and what do we recognize in ourselves about Emily?

At what can you share a time in your life when you became maybe a recluse?

Was there a period for you of social isolation and what brought about that and, and was that a boon to your creativity or Was that a.

An inhibitor?

Well, when I was in my early 30s and I was starting my career, I made the mistake of dating somebody I worked with, and she was 11 years older.

And, you know, I don't want to go into details.

Let's just say I wasn't the only one in the picture.

So the way that it went down and how it went down and the other person was at that job who had a position of power over me, I didn't really date anybody for three years after that.

I isolated my.

I thought I was angry at her, and then I thought I was angry at women, and it ended up being that I was just angry at myself, and I isolated myself by not dating anybody for about three years, almost three years, which is an extremely long time.

And all that did was just prevent me from connecting with other people.

So it definitely felt Dickinson, like now.

Now, were you creating through that process, or did it shut you down?

And you said you went through it shut you down and you withdrew from dating.

But was this from.

From male friendships as well?

Was this from being vulnerable?

From being vulnerable, yeah.

Just that.

Yeah, because it's in the romantic sense and also in the friendship sense, because it's like, you know, I shared myself with someone, and it was just not the situation I should have been in.

And instead of me, you know, taking ownership for the part that I played and accepting that I'm not perfect and accepting that things, you know, don't always go that the way that they quote, unquote, should, you know, I lived under the tyranny of should.

I just said, well, I'm just going to abstain.

I went from one end of the spectrum to the other, and the abstention is, well, if you don't.

If you're not in the game, you're not going to get hurt.

But if you're not in the game, you're not going to play, you're not going to live, you're not going to experience.

And three years of somebody's life is a long time.

It's a long time to be afraid to make mistakes.

Right on.

Maybe that's why this triggers me, now that I think about it.

Well, that's what.

That's what I'm trying to think of it.

And did you pull yourself from that?

Was there another individual or was there art?

I think it was just.

I did a lot of work.

I remember one of the things that really helped me pull out of it was the Hawaiian.

The Hawaiian thought process of just taking accountability.

Like, you know, I caused this is what I caused.

If I cause it, I forgive myself.

I can also, by taking accountability, I know that I'm no longer a victim.

Because if I help cause this, that means I can stop doing the behavior that led to it.

And I have agency over how I act moving forward.

It doesn't happen to me.

I played a part in it, so then I can move on and move forward.

So that's one of the ways that it went through.

And then, I mean, poetry is always there, right?

Like, there's always the Nerudas, which make it seem really cool to be in love again.

Right, right, right.

But art played a part.

But I really did some introspection and realized, you know, what part did I play in this situation?

Why am I so angry?

And at the end of the day, it wasn't that I was angry at her.

I wasn't angry at women.

I wasn't angry.

I was angry at myself.

Because I should have been better in my head, right at that point.

I should have been more intelligent.

I should have been this, I should have been that.

When in reality it's, yeah, was I intelligent enough to see that something wasn't kosher?

Sure.

But for some reason I chose to ignore that.

And that's okay.

It's what I needed at the time.

So in that sense, I think there is definitely a parallel with the character of Dickinson in this movie.

She just never got to that realization point.

I don't believe.

Yeah, yeah.

And it.

It came in as.

As illness.

Yeah.

And I feel like the illness was internalized.

Like, it's.

It's that even when she was gasping in pain, it was.

It wasn't a yell, it wasn't a scream.

It wasn't.

It was these shakes.

It was very self contained, you know, contained inside.

And yeah, it's.

I'm not saying they're saying exactly this, but there's a suggestion that keeping things within or will overwhelm you will.

You'll act.

And I believe this.

Like when I was going through my father's.

Through grieving my father's death, I was moving too fast to grieve and I developed acne, which I never even had going through puberty.

I started having breathing issues.

I started having heart rate issues where I've never been sick and I haven't been sick since.

Since.

So I think withholding and having no release, maybe not literally, but maybe so will eventually kill you.

You have to let some of that pressure go, whether through creation or not.

Maybe her poems were the way for her to.

Even though they were very restrained.

Maybe that was her way of letting go.

Right.

And maybe, maybe her becoming a recluse wasn't madness.

It was a way to have space for creation.

Well, that too, yeah.

I mean, that, that, that is how she kept you.

Quietly passionate.

I mean, you're pouring it, you're, you're writing it onto a page.

You're not, you're.

You're writing about screaming and, and expressing passion.

And then one other question too.

You know, I.

The quiet passion I'm thinking of is there, you know, obviously for us poetry.

What would you akin as another one of your quiet passions or a passion of yours that might not have had a chance to manifest that, that there's something else that you also have within you that hasn't fully been able, you know, to, to fully come out.

You mean like my competitive ballroom dancing career?

Perhaps.

I don't know.

Because if there's one thing that I've learned through my father's death, through all of, you know, what we just discussed in some other things as well, is if I'm passionate about something, I'm not quiet about it.

I go into it.

I don't think there's anything.

I'm not loud.

I don't go like.

But if I love something, I'm.

I proclaim.

And you.

And you.

Nice.

Yeah.

I mean, look behind me.

That's a WWE title, my friend.

Those are James Bond funko pops.

Right?

I'm a huge Disney adult.

None of these Broadway guy, like, none of these things I keep quiet about because I love sharing what makes me happy with others that would enjoy it as well.

Yeah, I guess.

You know, like the only thing that comes to mind for me is, is.

Is singing in that.

I, When I was 13, I was doing my bar mitzvah hop Torah portion and like my mom's like, oh, wow, isn't he pretty good?

And you know, I was very theatrical with it.

I was delivering with all this and it wasn't necessarily on key.

And the cantor was like, oh.

And my mom was like, oh, should we put him in some singing lessons?

And the cantor was like, no, I don't think you should, because his voice is going to change in a year or two and it's going to.

To change the range or whatever.

What so much bs you would have learned breath control, you would have learned technique.

Right.

So, like that, that one thing.

And, and yes, I didn't go through the formal training of a.

Of singing, but that in turn fueled my poetry so much of like finding my own rhythms and, and like, like to your, to your, I guess, test.

Like, I, I bust out the song.

I'm not even afraid to bust out the song, even though it's not only correct.

So I, I've shifted the fear.

I just don't have the skill set of having perfected that.

It's almost like, like hip hop, like, and rap.

Like, okay, if I were to lean into, you know, being a full fledged hip hop artist, like, I would have to stay on beat a little more.

And I can write to that, but there's something about how I write or something about the writing I like that goes off on tangents that doesn't have to, says, always fit into the bar structure.

There are hip hop artists that do it, you know, but, but yeah, I, I'm comfortable now with not having music necessarily in the background.

But yeah, for me, singing, I don't.

Know, dude, I've shared some car rides with you and Telluride.

Know that you bust out into song, you know that I bust out into song.

I bust.

I'm just saying that was a passion that, okay, you know, if I had had those lessons early on, could have changed, changed trajectory in some respects.

No regrets.

I do think it's interesting though that, you know that I can be a classicist.

Right.

And you know that right now I'm very preoccupied with finding different poetic forms and adhering strictly to its structure, but with contemporary language and contemporary things.

And sometimes when you are a master of the structure and a master of the technique, you break it for emotional resonance.

And what you're describing seems to me that.

Right, I'm not, I'm not assuming you're a master and you're not.

I don't say you're claiming to be a master, but I think you know enough about something to be able to play around with it.

And you always, always love playing around with.

I like to, I like to, to follow the foundational stuff and be really rigid about it so I can achieve, so I can achieve transcendence and surpass it.

You love to play around within it, push it.

You like to push those boundaries.

I mean, at least that's what I see.

Right?

So I don't see that as different.

Yeah, no.

Quietly, passionately.

Quietly, passionately.

I used to, you know, one of my favorite vocab words was vehemence.

Oh, really?

You know, you know what vehement.

When I learned it in, I think, seventh grade, we had vocab checks and.

You wanted to vehemently do the Hemingway,.

But, but yeah, I, I, I, I guess It's a negative.

A negative connotation.

But because I always heard it.

What.

What did you hear it described as?

I heard it as violently passionate.

Vehement.

Being violently passionate is how I describe that.

But, like, yeah, I've heard it.

I've heard it that way.

I've heard it that way.

But I also have heard it in the sense of enthusiasm.

I've also heard, like, just passionate.

Like, passionately.

It is passionate, but I've heard the violent before that, but yeah.

Can vehemently vehemence be positive?

Why can't it be?

Why.

Why does violence.

So I.

You and I have discussed this before.

Like, I. I think we're in a culture.

I think we're in a culture that commodifies emotion and has industries around how to overcome negative emotions.

Anger is negative.

Jealousy is negative.

But I do think that we need to feel all of our emotions because they each have a purpose.

Like, guilt leads to redemption.

Right.

If you don't feel guilty.

Feeling guilty sucks, but if you feel guilty, then that could lead to a redemption.

So I think we need to go through all of these processes.

They're all part of a spectrum.

And to ignore the spectrum, to not even be able to live in it, doesn't allow us to.

To live in this world because we will have times when we're angry.

We will have times when we're guilty.

Like, anger leads to release.

Sometimes you need to be like, ah, right.

And that's okay.

And like, you can be vehemently opposed to an unjust practice and which.

Which may lead to positivity.

All right, so.

So quiet passion.

Yeah, we're.

We're somewhat split.

Didn't.

Didn't connect with you as.

As much as some of the earlier things that we've watched.

Can we do a quick comparison to Dead Poet Society in.

I mean, are we feeling like this repressed, you know, we have the opening scene, of course, of this repressive atmosphere and some of her poetry, I guess, coming.

Coming out of that.

It's critique on religion, classism.

What.

What is.

What was.

I mean, I guess she lived.

She lived meagerly.

Yeah.

What was her view of, I guess, like, capitalistic values?

Emily Dickinson.

She was always reminded that she should be grateful for the place she has in society.

Right.

That's.

That's a theme in the movie with her being dissatisfied.

So I don't know.

But when it comes to Deadpool society, I. I keep coming to artistic rebellion versus societal conformity.

Right.

Just the creation, for example, of the Dead Poet Society as A way to rebel against what the societal norms that they had.

And you have at the beginning, a young Emily at a Mount Holyoke.

Mount Holyoke Seminary, you know, her school, arguing with her headmistress when being asked to accept Christ.

Right.

Yeah.

And she remained seated.

And I remember her saying something akin to.

I wish I could feel as others do, but I cannot.

Right.

Like, I. I won't.

I won't lie to myself to make you feel better.

I won't lie to make anybody else feel better.

I do not feel as you do.

Would it be easier for me?

Yes.

Would I be happier?

Yes.

But I do not feel that.

So I'm going to be honest.

And that is very akin to the Dead Poet Society.

The boys in the Dead Poet Society rebelling to do it.

At the end, they end up conforming, but they have that last one poetic act.

That last poetic act.

Right.

When they say goodbye to their captain and acknowledge their captain, Robin Williams's character.

I forgot the name of the teacher.

Mr. Keating.

Mr. Keating.

Yeah.

Yes.

But.

Yeah, yeah, but there's.

There's.

There's no Emily Dickinson.

And she should be.

I mean, it's funny because maybe she should.

Wouldn't she have been taught alongside, you know, Whitman and everybody else based on the time period?

Well, Bronte, she kept quoting and.

Well, she was Civil War era.

Right.

She was Civil War era.

Browning and Bronte.

My computer froze.

Yeah.

And I.

And when it comes to her refusal to publicly conform to church, to marriage, to publishing.

Right.

And that's an interesting question that I have for you in a second.

But I also think that mirrors her in her poetic innovations.

Right.

Like the capitalization of nouns, Rand, seemingly random to give them importance.

Right.

Like the.

We already talked about the EM dashes and stuff like that.

I think it's interesting how they use that to.

To mirror her poetry feeds her rebellion and her rebellion, like her.

Maybe her poetry is a manifestation of that rebellion.

Right.

And maybe that's why she was revolutionary in that sense.

And when it comes to Dead Poets Society, It's funny because we didn't really see them create.

Other than the scene with.

The scene with.

Oh, God.

And Ethan Hawke.

Yeah.

Like that was a moment of creation that.

And we see her writing a lot in this movie, as you said, but we.

I think the Dead Poet Society was people who appreciate poets or poetry.

And the Emily Dickinson Acquired Passion deals with somebody who creates poetry.

It's a little different.

Right.

Yeah.

Her contemporaries were.

Were authors sometimes more.

More than.

Or playwrights maybe, or authors more than other Poets too.

Yeah.

Here's the question I wanted to ask you because I know we're about to.

Run out of time.

What does the film suggest about publishing?

Is it validation or is it betrayal?

I mean, from the one interaction that she had with the publisher, it would seem.

That the.

The right publisher is validating, but the someone that does not align with, you know, the kind of the, The.

The partner that says what you want them to say rather than what they're really feeling sometimes or what you want to hear, rather, can be destructive.

So, yeah, I mean, Perhaps she.

That, that, that would have been a role for her of validating other poets down the line.

She becomes a, she becomes a Florana and, And.

And publishes other poets.

In addition, she was a harsh critic of other poets throughout this movie too, so.

Well, yeah, but everyone that is up to her standard.

How about for you?

I think the movie.

I don't think the movie clearly defines where it lands.

I think it presents both cases, right.

Like, her being published allows us to know who she was years later, allows us to know that she was revolutionary for her time and that she has an impact on generations of poets that came after her.

Right.

If she wasn't published, that wouldn't happen.

But her being published while she was alive in the manner that she was published with a male editor who thought, I know better than this woman, she felt betrayed.

So I think the film presents both.

But it's just interesting, right?

I. I think maybe we take for granted what publishing is for us now versus what it was for somebody back then.

Oh, yeah, very true.

I mean, post something on Instagram.

It's published on, On Facebook too.

Yeah.

And if, let's say, like, for example, you submit to the New Yorker and you've decided to post that poem before they review it on your Instagram, oh, it's published.

Peace out.

It's already been published.

It's out of contention.

Yeah.

And.

Yeah.

Is the validation of a thousand likes more rewarding than it appearing in a periodical that has a small, a reputable one with a relatively shrinking readership?

Readership, yeah.

Yeah.

Who knows?

I mean, that's the other thing our.

And we've talked about it before, our delivery mechanisms are constantly evolving.

The way that these poems got to people are way different than the way our poems get to people, which are way different than a generation after us are getting to people.

You know, I think Emily Dickinson would have.

Would have came to the, to the poetry slam, to even the Dead Poet Society, and that.

That might have gotten her out of the Funk a couple more not, not necessarily like minded individuals, but fellow appreciators of, of the written word would have had a healing effect for her.

She was just so isolated, right?

And she was isolated because she, it was very rare for her to find somebody who could understand the way her mind worked other than her sister and could be there and, and, and inspire creativity.

But.

She isolated like society isolated her, but then she isolated herself and denied herself.

Like there was a scene with the suitor who came and she was rude to him and he left and she said like, why did you, why did you do.

She's like, I don't know.

I don't know why I do these things.

I feel they're getting close and then I push him away so they can't leave, but they leave anyway.

Right?

And that.

It just, it makes me feel.

I felt an immense amount of pity.

But I also, I'm like, you're doing this to yourself.

It's, it's a guy that, yeah, he's younger, but he had.

He's not there because.

He's there because he admires your poetry.

That's stated in the movie.

They make it very clear.

He's a great admirer of your work.

He wants to get know you more.

He admires you.

It's what she wanted and she can't deal with it.

We, we wrote a few verses about this.

I dug up my piece from the first time that I saw it.

I found it.

Okay.

That I was going to try read its.

Would you, would you like to go first or would you like me to go?

No, I'd love to.

I want to hear yours.

All right.

Yeah, let me go first.

Actually, the following poem was written by my reclusive alter ego, a far more gregarious poet named Greg.

Yeah, let's call him Greg.

So your rap name is Scott and your alter ego is Greg.

Oh, this is, this is.

I guess I don't know if it's.

Yeah, it's my alter ego.

Let's call him Greg.

Okay, so again, Greg wrote this.

I'm reading it for the first time.

This poet has noticed he's growing less and less focused.

One minute he's upside down, sideways, the next he's in lotus.

He stands, he sits, he clacks, he clicks, he uploads, downloads, then changes his profile pics.

22 Jumping jacks, 30 second planks, updating his codex, that and the OCD arranging of a few rows of his bics.

This is only aerobics, let's face it.

But don't Face him.

He's becoming agoraphobic.

To be clear, that's agoraphobic, not agoraphobic as in the irrational fear of vice presidents named Al.

Although the inconvenient truth of it all is this.

This slouch really has no clue what's going on with climate change because he rarely leaves the couch.

So as his condition continues to worsen, he's taken to speaking almost entirely in third person.

Because having avoided doctors, refused help, he finds it difficult even dealing with himself as it stands.

He sits, he clacks, he clicks.

And if any clubs, cafes or coffee houses are shutting down, he wouldn't know.

But who cares?

There's no place like homebody.

He's his own one man show.

Oh, how Brecht and Wyvin try to compete when he already expects to win.

His friends, family and all his would be fans are waiting outside for him.

But he won't let this audience in.

On the bright side, the longer he stays boarded up in his apartment without shaving or showering, the less susceptible and less desirable he becomes to sex offenders.

What?

I'm just reading this.

It's not like he's really a target for this.

And no one should ever go through life expecting to be considered a subject.

Greg realizes he should have edited some out of respect.

But Greg needed an excuse to try out his theories on the alienation versus predator effect.

Not to be confused with the Aryan Nation effect, which states self imposed isolation, limiting physical interaction with people of color, inaccurately convinces a white individual of his dominance and superiority over another race.

Regardless of his exposure to BET programming, the History Channel and most Tyler Perry movies, Greg digresses.

The longest conversations he had had all day are also his shortest.

Both with delivery men from two separate eateries and both appropriately named Phil.

Five or six words and that was that.

There was, there's good and leave it on the welcome mat.

A Cobb salad and a turkey border arranged.

Both meals ordered in, no time online seamlessly.

No money or eye contact exchanged.

He takes care of his needs with ease, but it's crippled by ego and pride.

Even the angel on his shoulder keeps screaming, take a goddamn walk.

Go the outside.

His subconscious used to be his hero, but now it's a half eaten sandwich on rye.

It's not that he's socially awkward, he just feels socially superior sometimes.

Given all that he's seen in this state, his ex wife had a better chance at getting through to him through YouTube vids and Internet memes as he binge watches four episodes at once on two separate screens.

He draws inspiration from animation, speaks in emoticons, and thinks he can control temperatures via TV stations.

ABC means it's a bit cold, NBC pleads needs better clothes while CBS seems to be showing could be snow.

So when reaching cw, he closes windows.

He's starting to realize that nothing rhymes with orange as the new black.

So he watches the Knicks, then eats a few knickknacks, lies down to watch True Detective while hooked to a polygraph.

But he's all out of leftovers and Breaking Bad's not coming back.

Sleep no more is now sleeps too much.

Used to be groundbreaking theater and gut punching stand up.

There'd be flirting with video store clerks, endless improv jams, checking out checkout girls and using a phone to place calls and make plans.

He'd actually go and see his favorite bands and attend live prize winning poetry slams to get his fix.

Now all it takes is a pirated copy of Pirates of the Caribbean movies and endless streams of Netflix.

No longer craving attention, he consumes more than he produces.

But with all this variety, his true aesthetic gets diluted.

Spotlights out.

Center stage is his easy chair, and he sits in the dark.

Cut the crap, Cross town.

Someone shits and it's art.

Flip that handicap backwards to parallel park between work hard and work harder.

Hell, even if no one hears any of this, not one letter, he believes writing it has made him feel better.

And that only in Scott.

Hey, that's me.

Sharing it with strangers.

He achieves balance.

So if you're gifted in lifting spirits, try and stop Robin and stop robbing the world of your talents.

So let's not be strangers.

After this poem, every day and night, he chooses to stay home.

It isn't always the venue's fault for ending an open mic or closing its doors.

It's your own.

Uncap your next penisance.

Your work's worth a rebirth.

Because if you don't want any more doors to close, you need to open yours first.

What about this movie led you to that fall?

Me exploring what my antithesis would be if I never left the house,.

If.

I was shut up.

But in a modern sense, in a modern kind of sensibility.

And.

And now, like, it's.

It's something that I. I want to explore a little further with.

With current.

Current conditions of.

All right, yeah.

What.

What.

What a reclusive would be, you know, like.

But that main point that we talked about at the beginning too, of like, if you're not out there exposed to the stuff, what are you drawing for from your writing?

Too and it is just media sometimes, but you need to have a little bit balance of.

Balance of those both.

But I will say, you know, the part of me, it's an alter ego, but there is a part of me that becomes.

If I have shut in.

And it's, you know, it brings to mind the difference between solitude and loneliness.

Right?

Like, I enjoy my solitude.

I. I do.

And there came a point when, like, I'd be left alone.

And once I had my body of work, what do I do when I am completely alone and I don't have anything?

What did I used to do is I used to just go over my poems and say them out loud wherever I was.

Say, I didn't have a book, I didn't have a phone.

I didn't have anything.

Would go.

And I'd go.

I just perform them wherever I was.

I remember my brother leaving me at, like, a train station once and, like, he just drove away and like, he's like, I'm not picking you up for another, you know, hour or something.

I don't know how I was gonna get home, but just kind of went over my poems.

I was like, all right, I'm okay.

I have these.

These right here with me.

So that came out Greg.

I don't know where the name Greg came out.

Plus, I just like the joke of being agoraphobic and an alien.

Alienation versus Predator.

Some sort.

Yeah, I enjoyed that one.

Yeah.

Some sort of making those.

Making those work.

The idea.

I'm.

I'm a big fan of Wrecked as a, you know, it's surrealist degree.

But.

But can you enjoy.

Can you enjoy a show that's purposely created for you not to enjoy it?

Like, or, or.

Yeah.

Can you enjoy something that's.

That's.

It's fighting against all impulses for what they know you're going to be able to follow and, and even enjoy.

I'd say.

Were you a fan, you know, Bertold Breck in any of his work of.

In theater and stuff?

I mean, job.

The Irresistible Rise of Arturo Ui.

Yeah, yeah, no, I. I get that.

Are you able to.

Are you able to enjoy that stuff or do you check out from it, like, like, even a Twin Peaks too?

Like.

Like some people, because they can't follow a linear plot line and it's meant to kind of like, alienate the viewer.

They don't have a way in.

It's kind of how I felt with this movie.

I recently rewatched Mulholland Drive and it's more linear than.

Than the Twin Peaks.

I Think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I think that I can find a way, like, for example, even with this movie, that I had trouble tying into the characters.

I fell into the lighting, I fell into the dialogue.

I fell into this.

And I found a way to enjoy it.

Right.

But it was more of a.

It wasn't just the thing that I received.

I had to actively search for it.

And then I actually actively had to figure out what about it was making me reject some of this.

Some of this.

Some of this movie.

Right.

Like, I much like Emily mirroring her.

I wish I could see the movie like you did, Scott.

I really do.

But I. I didn't.

I didn't.

Even though I do feel like I enjoyed parts of it and that I took a lot from it, you know, for my piece, you were over a couple of last week, a few days ago, or at the beginning of last week, before the holiday, and we were talking about writing a piece based on what happens when the words get stuck in your throat or what happens when you're not able to express yourself, like a balloon getting filled up until it pops.

Right?

So I had that on my mind.

I had that on my mind.

And then when I saw this movie, that did resonate with me.

So I'm going to read my piece, and then I'm going to walk you through why I did it.

Not what the poem means, but why I did it.

Right.

So this one is called the Words Remained and Jammed Within After a quiet passion in the style of Emily Dickinson, Ed.

The words remain and jammed within the syllables lie mute A sinner's prayer dies entombed on silken parachutes A kidney fails its mother's womb the bile congeals inside Our angry reprimands implode the silence deafens heart Our father's piety has failed to render moral fines dismember limbs across facades once built now collapsed the air once bright with sun and lights A life to give away Gave all it had enclosed to give a suffocated blight O moon, O stars, O nightingale who sings without remorse My envy stabs and rips your breast to take the soul from you.

There's some vehemence in there.

There's some vehemence.

And you know, what I was trying to do was I told you I felt a great amount of pity for the character of Emily Dickinson in this movie.

And I wanted to give her release.

I wanted to give her a chance to yell what she couldn't.

So I kept her.

I kept her architecture and I distorted it right the Quad trains, the em dashes, the capitalization of abstract nouns.

Compressed lyric voice.

Maybe a first person speaker reflecting on morality and silence and soul.

Right?

But her metrical exactitude, I purposefully made it looser because I wanted to use form for structure and not constraint.

I wanted to start untying it a little bit there.

I also think this is opinion.

I think my capitalization, which you can see here in the poem, is a bit louder.

Dickinson used to use capitalization to elevate meaning.

I wanted to weaponize it.

I wanted to attack with it.

And while she flirted with uncertainty, I imposed rupture.

I wanted to break open what hers held.

Intention.

Right?

So I also wanted to translate her inner suffering into outer violence.

Right?

She often had her poems end in ambiguity and slippage and maybe an interior revelation, right?

That's how.

That's what she did.

If you guys are familiar with.

With her poem, I wanted to.

To reverse that.

The first couple of stanzas mirror that.

But the last, the fifth stanza, it turns sharply.

There's no irony in it.

There's no decorum.

Right.

There's no celestial infinites.

Right?

It's just ah and stab and a knife.

Right?

I wanted to give her repressed grief a final gesture of agency, even if it was brutal.

Right.

I mean, the theology's there, right?

Maybe the difference is that while Dickinson questioned God in private in this poem, I wanted to drag God's failures into the light again, just trying to give her that release, complicate her obsession with death.

But I wanted to give her a voice.

I wanted to snap the ties of her restraint, and I wanted to let rage and envy.

Right.

I told you that.

I thought she was envious.

Enter that cathedral and give her a voice that screams and severs and survives even envy, even violence.

So, yeah, that's how it inspired me.

Right.

I keep going back to her name.

Her initials, E.D.

Appropriate, isn't it?

Yep.

Where just, you know, can't.

Can't sustain the.

The desire might be there, but.

But it's the.

The release isn't.

Isn't even happening.

Yeah, man.

I mean, it might be.

I might be fooling myself with this one, but I wanted to let her speak through me and then say what she never could.

You know, like, that's.

That's what I wanted because, as I mentioned to you, that's the gift that I would give her.

I'm like, just say what you mean to say.

Just live life out loud.

Right?

Maybe that's not what she wanted to.

Do, but she's still she's saying, though.

She's saying.

She's saying some.

But she's not acting on it.

I.

Maybe.

I mean, yeah, I think she's.

She's saying she's not doing, you know, all the respect I find her to.

But even when she says, as I mentioned, like, I mean, I've read enough of her poems.

I know you have as well.

It's always whispered.

Right.

It's.

It's.

She doesn't have that.

That the dialogue suggests in her written work.

Right, right.

I. I also, to.

To your point with how you.

You.

The capitals.

I'd love to see some of her original written stuff next to how it was published and just to be able.

To compare what I did some research on that.

I got to see.

Yeah, maybe I'll.

I'll send you the link I had the.

Posted in the show notes.

Yeah, post it in the show notes.

Oh, God.

What's that.

What's that poem?

The.

Although I would not stop for death, I. I did look that one up and saw the capitalization.

So I. I will send that over.

But anyway, yeah, that's.

That's what I did.

Now, have you seen a recording too, though, like a more passionate delivery of some of her poems of people that have been able to exhume or.

Have you.

Is it in the show notes?

Right.

Right.

No, I mean, I'm trying to harken back to a clip from the movie of her.