Poe Ballantine

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their

good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is po Valentine, a fiction and nonfiction writer known for his novels and especially as essays, many of which appear in the Sun. One of Valentine's short stories was included in Best American Short Stories, and two of his

essays have appeared in the Best American Essays series. His writing has also appeared in The Coal City Review, Kenyon Review and Atlantic Monthly author Tom Robbins said, po Valentine is the most soulful, insightful, funny, and altogether luminous underknown writer in America. If you're getting value out of this show, please go to one you feed dot Net slash Support

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Hello Larica, thanks for having me. It's a real honor to have you on. I've been reading your work in a magazine called The Sun for a long time now. The Sun is a special magazine to me, a because it's a great magazine, and be because I first discovered it at a place called Niches, and I think listeners

may have heard me bring it up before. I always bring it up because the gentleman who found it was kind of a mentor to me, and he's gone these days, so I'm always excited to bring up anything that has to do with him. And I first discovered The Son at that place. It was sort of a far away retreat place, and so it's always been a magical magazine for me, and your writings have been a part of that good I'm happy to hear that. So let's start the show like we always do, with the parable. There's

a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. He looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the

grandfather says, the one you feel need. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. It's a good one. It's a good metaphor or set of constructs, if you like. Or to the angel of the devil on the shoulder. I'm constantly worring with that bad wolf and marveling at how well people do by cultivating their pet. Well, that's the part that frustrates me. I think I've got my life and where

I'm bold and I'm humble and I'm poor. So I think I've been feeding the right one, but always marveled at how well people do who feed the bad one. And I wish the world was that way. I suppose there's probably an explanation. I hope that's not a disappointing answer, but I'm in charge of reality and whatever I get grasp. You've written a number of essays and number of novels. And you know, most of your life you spent as a wandering writer, I guess would be the best way

to say it. You went from place to place, you worked a lot of jobs as a cook, as different ings, and we're waiting for your writing to kind of pay off. And then it seems like in the last number of years you've become a little bit more settled. Is that still the case. Oh yeah, I've lived here in this small town in uh, Nebraska for sixteen years, and I think maybe I think it's sixteen years, and I'm happy

to be settled. And so one of the things that I wanted to explore for a moment with you was the theme of the wolves comes up about feeding one wolf or the other, but in a lot of your writing, and you actually say it pretty clearly in one line you say, I was also secretly, as always praying for metamorphosis. So can you tell me a little bit about the role that changing yourself as played in your life in

the past and today? Yeah, sure, I can try. Uh. I was not very satisfied with myself as a human being or as a player, and I lived in the suburbs and I was pretty overwhelmed by the world, and I wanted to escape that world and have more perhaps control over it. And of course I had dreams, like everybody, of being, you know, somebody's special magic. So the experiment, theory, experiments traveling were ways of trying to be a either or both finding myself or becoming someone else, whatever that

happened to be. I was afraid to find myself because I thought it might be as disappointing, you know, as I appeared in the mirror. So the better option for me was transformation or metamorphosis whatever your life, becoming something completely different and you know, the slam bang, like your heroes are, you know. But through that process, of that long, process, arduous process of moving and working numerous jobs and living on great little money and so forth, I suppose I

could become profoundly different than I was in the beginning. Now, metamorphosis can apply to anything, you know, I mean spiritually. I was after that too, who And I think some extent I discussed that in my work. Although I don't think very often in a direct way, it's very clear though that it's there, and I think a lot of my questions actually aim at some of the what I would call, you know, spiritual searching that you were doing. You have something that you called, I think half jokingly,

but the moral mechanism of the molecule theory. Can you tell me a little bit about that. Yeah, let's to say that everything from the beginning is imviewed, but the spirit of whatever force created it. And I was having this discussion with a friend of mine a week or so ago. She's a Buddhist minister whatever those people who preside over Buddhist ceremonies are called. But I address most of my friends are secular. Most of my friends are nonbelievers,

you know. I mean, they're materialists in one sense or another. Science is basically their religion, and so I'm speaking to them. And I think the massive people are sort of that camp, and so I'm speaking to them, not to try to trick them or anything, but just so that I don't bias them. I listened to your the major podcast that

you've got up there. I forgot his name, but he talked about, you know, what would Jesus do, and that Jesus fish a sort of a symbol, although he's not using traditional original Christianity or anything like that as a guideline, and so for whatever reason, and perhaps hardly because I was in that way of thinking for so many years that I'm talking, I'm trying to talk to people so they'll listen to me and not just immediately see a

word that raises a red flag for them. But anyway back to the moral mechanism of the molecule, it's all it is saying that if something is created in a deliberate way, and the world has purpose, and it's interconnected and functional and beautiful and graceful, and love is the evolutionary product, and so on and so forth, that every last particle that those are the things people I could talk about my friends like to talk about, the Adams and so forth, are imbued with with this force, just

like you know every cell has miochondria and and so forth. Yeah, there's a line where you say, you know that spirit and all of its archetypes and guys, is all that you will ever possess of worth. Does that line still resonate with you? You wrote that it's been a while ago. I think it was in a series of essays that was early in the two thousands. Yeah, fived one minutes of Christ. I think that's from that it is. Yeah,

and that's probably my most directly spiritual essay. You know, where I'm talking directly about the influence of spirit and the reality is Spirit's easy to talk to say things one thing or another recyeliches, but in actuality, in your own experience, what what do you know? I mean, what do I I can speak for myself and I know very little. But there are certain realities that are evident to me, that are accessible to me, and those are

my anchors. And there's things that I've experienced. There's there's things that I can see and perceivers in one way or another, in one sense or another that I have found useful to me over the years where other forms, other systems and methods of advice have failed. Yeah. I think so much of what spirituality for me has become when it's working well, is exactly like you said, there's

very much an experiential piece to it. What is my actual experience and less my ideas about what my experience is. And it's easy for me to fall into being completely stuck in my head with ideas. But the more that I pay attention to my experience, I seem to be getting more out of that route, right, Yeah, and we have to realize that we're all on different paths or different tiers or however you like to look at it. And the only way to really validate what's been offered

to you is reality. Is the only way to sort it out is through your own observation. I mean you there are other things too, There's instinct, and there's all these other things that are very difficult to describe, these processes that I've heard people discuss in very eloquent ways. But at some point you discount what everybody else that's saying.

I mean, even I've rejected orthodoxy for a long time, even though later in my years I'm finding that my experience is doubcaling with with most of what major religion has to say to teach the moral codes and so of course, but I still think it's more valuable for an individual to pursue the path that's set before that individual, however that may be. And a few of us have a chance to do that. Most of us are, you know, eliminated very early by poverty or you know, or by

the lack of ability in whatever way. Yeah, you've got a line in there that I love, where you say, Whatever I believe must have the depth and power to repel evil, insanity, loneliness, and despair. It must be built on the observation of what is good and true. Yeah, that's your good wolf metaphor, again very clearly. Yeah, and it sounds it sounds simple, you know, But how long did it take me to come around to that position? And how long was I lost? And and not just lost,

but viciously and magnificently lost. So that yeah, so that wolf was howm most every nime? Yeah, talk to me about that process. So in your writings, there's a period you can tell very clearly that you are kind of at the end of your rope. I think would be a safe way to say, you're you're in despair. You're older, your your thirty nine or your forty, The writing hasn't panned out, You've accomplished nothing in the typical sense of the way the world would look at it, and you

were feeling very despairing. How did you find your way from there to where you are now? That's the most interesting period of life, a threshold period or the transformational period or whatever. Where I fell apart, It literally fell apart, and it's because I collided with reality, with the probability that I wasn't going to be successful, in the knowledge that successful wasn't going to really make that much difference. You know, I've seen enough people succeed, however you want

to define that. And on the on quick aside, we live in America, where you're not permitted to pursue a humble and impoverished existence. You know that they might have respect for you, and in India or something, if you had a kind of life, but in America, you know, and I and you're reminded of every day if you're you know, if you're if you're cooking, if you have a grec apron, or you know, if you live in

a certain part of town or whatever. So you can you can say how noble it is to do one thing or another and to have the highest goal of beauty and truth and all that's wonderful, But in reality, you're just gonna get smashed. You're gonna get very sigmatized. And so that's something that you have to deal with. And either you're gonna move from America or you're going to find a way to deal with that. And I wasn't about to just build my own world and go live in a TP in Oregon or something like that.

I was going to try to please my please my peers and my parents by by winning something, you know, by winning the tournament, at least, you know, one major tournament. At the same time, I'm trying to develop spiritually, and it's hard to reconcile those two. It really is. It's

impossible to reconcile those two. But at the same time, that's what you're facing in America as a struggling artist and just a you know, a human being has to have a certain set of you know, you've got to have a certain kind of tool kit before you're even accepted in society. Otherwise you're just stamp the loser and you' marginalized. So that's it's a difficult So I I ran into that man, I got I got talked out the other side, and I fell down and boo hoo hooed for a

long time. And but at the same time, I had probably been writing pretty well and luck came my way and I did enough, just enough, I think, to to exonerate myself or to justify my existence. And at the same time I kept my integrity by not you know, writing some garbage bestseller. You know that I do would probably you raise me in the esteem of others. But so yeah, so that was the razor's edge, as Somerset Mom was called. Hey everyone, just a couple of quick

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means a lot to us. Those of you that haven't now as a great time when you feed dot net slash support. Thanks. And now back to the episode with Poe Balentine. That line of you know you've done enough to exonerate yourself reminds me of Leonard cohen line where it's I think it was in an interview I read of his, where he he's saying something very similar like he's just trying to get enough work done that day

to to almost justify the day or or something. And and so is that kind of what you mean and when you say sort of to exonerate yourself, that you you did enough good work in your mind, enough good art. Yeah, certainly. Yeah. Look at you go and visit your sister and Je's you got friends, and then you go see your parents and they've got you know, a couple of neighbors are over or they're old. You know, my dad's colleague, the

dad's teaching college. They're just looking at you, and you know, and you're in your late thirties and you haven't done anything, you know, and it's a cordial conversation. But everybody knows that you're a failure, especially you, you know, And so if you don't accomplish something, then I mean, I think, really you're gonna have to move to India or or commit yourself to a monastery or something like that. And listen, when you're writing or when you're doing any kind of

artistic endeavor, your sentences are wide open. They have to be, and you're subjecting yourself to all the vulnerability that it pay to be able to understand what's going on in your environment so that you can refine it into something that's useful to another reader or another viewer. And that kind of sensitivity or openness to your environment can't be

switched off, you know. You don't just switch it on when you go sit down and compose and then go downstairs and pour a glass of line and switch it off. It's always there. It's the same with it's the same thing with being honest. I mean, the really good comedians, the really good writers, the really good painters, the really good podcast interviewers are are honest, and they're honest to a fault. Otherwise they're not gonna be any good. That's

just my observation, but I'm sure it's true. And so you can't just switch it off and on and go be insincere for a while when you need to get something done and then you know, and you could, I suppose, be two different people. But that's just a waste of energy and it's and it's certainly not going to uh redound to your benefit in the long run on on any level. I mean we're talking about the spiritual level too, which is not independent of a creative effort. Those things

are tied together as well. Yeah, another thing that happened for you somewhere in this window was that you got married and you you had a child, and You've got a line that I love because this makes a lot of sense to me. It resonates with with my life to a certain extent, which was you're describing marriage and family and you're saying it has provided a sense of concrete responsibility that combined with my lack of free time has dispelled that old constant chorus of suicidal demons in

my head. And I love that line because, to a certain extent in my own life, I think that responsibility has helped make me into a version of myself that is less concerned with my own feelings, I would hope. So I think it's just perfectly natural for human beings. So me alone in America, what makes this place great

and what makes this place miserable is individualism. We have to really pay a big price for it, but it makes us a fascinating nation, and it makes us a very creative and technology dynamic nation because you've got people that are just going their own lives and they're doing exactly what they want to do, and they come up with fantastic stuff, you know, But eventually that being on

your own, it's just not natural. In my mind. Well, now, there are some people who put for it, but I wasn't, and I had resigned any possibility of having children, are being married. I was saying at forty I don't allow all. I was forty six or something like that. So it all came as a big surprise to me. And I'd always been willing to participate in something like that. I really didn't want it about it just sort of sacrificed

everything at the altar of being a good writer. And maybe I didn't need to do that, you know, maybe that was downright satanic. But but whatever providence was out there, I guess they felt sorry for me and gave me another chance. I know that a lot of people, a lot of creative, very creative people, can't make that part of their lives work, and so I know that I'm lucky.

But I still think that without that anchor, it's very normal, you know, don't want to have a family and want to have a family and to raise children and to be responsible and be part of a community. I guess it's rejected because it sounds so conformist, you know, but it's very normal and helpful and and and it's life saving. And I promise you I wouldn't be alive now if I hadn't, you know, settled down here and and entered into this this arrangement. So are you still married today?

Oh yeah, they're out there now, trying to be quiet. My sub piano less it's here. In a few minutes, you might be you know, I already be gone, oh no, yes, I'm still very happily married. I wouldn't. These two just came down with si illness is my son got mono and she buy virtue of that got some sort of

ungodly upper respiratory. So I played nursemaid and it was just very enjoyed the hell out of it, just you know, every four hours going in and administering medications and and you know, ice acting blankets and the nurse outfit I think was just a little over the top. But but but I really enjoyed. I just really enjoyed being responsible for other people's lives and as you say, not especially

the diminution of your own ego. Yeah, because even when you hit it big, if you hit it big, or if you can see it and especially see it in others, you realize it's not that important being a big shots just not you know, and maybe it is important, but it's not going to bring you any kind of kind of happiness or any kind of contentment or any kind of real purpose. It's just going to make you want more because that bad wolf barks. Yeah, I've experienced that

for sure. I was very touched by in the writings how much effort you put into your marriage. Your your wife came from I believe it was Mexico, spoke a different language, and you guys certainly had some challenges that you write pretty frankly about. But it was also very touching to see you just keep slugging away at it, not in the not slugging her, but you know, just slugging away at at trying to really make this work

for both each of you and your son. And it's just interesting for me to read a It was touching and be after reading so much of your life and so much of your time being sort of a loan or a drifter or it was such a revelation that that was all inside you. At least it was to me as I was reading it. I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah, I know what you're saying. I put a lot of time into being a father. I know,

Tom and I were just having a discussion. And I've just known a lot of kids who have had these major parental fail years and sometimes they are unavoidable, you know that or divorce or whatever, but that's kind of stuff that's really traumatic to children. And I've had a lot of friends who have been psychically permanently damaged, you know, they've just stopped growing at certain periods or they and I don't think they understand it themselves because they're too

young get perspective on it. And so I've just vowed, you know, I vowed that if I ever had a child, but I would put everything I could into it so that I wouldn't cause that child any more pain than the world that we know it has to offer. And

there's plenty of that kind of pain waiting. And so when you devote yourself to the child, you also have to devote yourself to the family that the source of the child, and you have to set an example and all that so that you can set this chain of events found in good faith and makes eventually idealistically at least makes the world a better place and not a more confused and painful place. Hasn't been too long ago that I saw my son off to college, so um well,

which was a pretty uh great moment. I mean, it's sad and also but but in so many ways a great moment my mind. I'm gonna go with I don't care if he goes to France. I saw him mother, I know, but I just wouldn't know what to do without him. So, um, yeah, with college, he's at the University of North Carolina in Nashville, Okay, and you're in Ohio. Yep, yep, Columbus, Ohio. Yeah, so that is a long way. Yeah, yep, it's a

it's a ways. He was looking at read in Oregon Portland's so this is a little bit better than that. So good words. Hop in a car and see him with an eight hour window. So how old is your boy now, Tom Jesus fifteen? Okay? Wow, yeah, you're getting there, I know. And he's talking about school and uh, you know, I told me you look, you're not gonna get it and probably not gonna get an academic scholarship. You need a scholarship because we don't have that, you're not gonna

get one. That then if you're not gonna get one, sports with either music or speech. So he's been concentrating on music and he's gifted. So how that means maybe in a scholarship. That's good. One of the things in your writing sort of referencing back to marriage and I'm so glad that you are still happily married because you wrote about how difficult it is to be married in

such wrenching detail. I've been there before, in the places that you were in, and I'm just gonna read this because I just thought it was a beautiful way to talk about what can happen in a relationship when it's not working. Having no shortage of disagreements to choose from,

we have nevertheless argued so much. The real conflicts have grown too large and distorted to confront or even recognize, so we hiss and snarl at each other over trifles, each hoping to land that final blame lane testimonial blow. And when I read that, I was just it's it's beautifully written, and it's just heart wrenching that we find

ourselves in those spots and very true to reality. Very gradually, I've learned that you can talk about anything in detail and reveal a lot more than you probably want to and strike a chord because if not more, married people will identify with that. I wasn't afraid to confess some things there, and I also hope that they would be useful to married couples, because marriage is not what it's It's not how it's painted, at least if you're if

you're not willing to examine the thing. All your friends and your parents and all the struggles that they went through, and your aunts and uncles. So it's a lot of work. It's more work than your job. And I don't care who you are, So I just thought I would be useful by, you know, by describing those things on a lighter note. You say, even a marriage and turmoil has

its benefits. It wards off for example, weird women, bad dates, late night visitors, pointless binges, impetuous trips to Montreal, and questions and insinuations about what kind of gringo ferry am I? Anyway? Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

it's a powerful social institution. And even in America where marriage is losing ground and do losing respect, it seems to be erodic, but I think that most people have tremendous respect for it because it is the sort of molecular foundation if you want to society, and it needs to be protected. So yeah, you gotta work, man. And you know, it's not all this business about love that people keep talking about. You know, love is hard work.

You know, to listen to you talk, there's a traditional streak, I guess I would say, there and and from your early years of of wandering and writing and drinking and you know, hanging out with the various different misfits of society, did you see yourself settling into some degree a more

traditional mindset? Oh? Yeah, yeah. My goal, My goal early on was to acquaint myself with America in the briefest way, ride a little freight, hitchhike and drive a truck and whatnot, and then you know, right the great American novel, and then retire up the hills and then not have anything

to do with society. Where I never had any idea I would become ensnared permanently in a permanent loop fashion, into the lifestyle that I had created, which was just marvelous for me because that's humility is really what I needed. I was getting all the lessons that I needed. I just wasn't my goals weren't being that because humility it

was not my goal. You know, I was going to be wise, and I was going to be cool, and I was going to be knowledgeable, and I was going to be a loof you know, I was gonna be John Steinbeck just at the edge of town, living at you know, wherever there was a town down there. But I wasn't going to be in balls. So yeah, so that was what happened with that. And uh and I

never did look at people. I would be at the sheet metal house, you know, with a band aid on my head because I had my uh doorhead cut open by some sheet metal or something, and it would be like, what are you doing here? You know, you look like a teacher? Where are you? Where are you here? You talk? You don't talk like us, You're not like us. And I could go home and go home and read and take notes, and I guess I didn't. I didn't fit

very well. But at the same time, you know, I mean I grew up in a lower middle class neighbor working class neighborhood, and I had every week and uh and I drank you know, true my Polish heritage, and so uh, I don't want to try to portray myself as something I'm not. I'm sort of like those two different people, you know, a self taught and uh maybe entitled to some gifts that the people that I was down there within the factories and the warehouse or whatever

didn't have, you know, didn't have the benefit of. So you wrote a book called Love and Terror on the howling Planes of Nowhere, which is both a story of your marriage, of growing up with your son, and of the horrific death and your investigation into it of the local college math professor that was written. It's been a number of years ago, maybe four or five years ago. Has any more known about what happened with him than

then when you finished the book. I've gathered lots of them and um, and it's all circumstantial and nothing really has opened this or shown any more light on it, unfortunately. And I really was confident that it would get some kind of confession or secondary confession or something like that, but nothing is like that has happened. It's hard for me to believe that a town this small would be

able to keep a secret like that. So well, capt Ye, all you're writing is wonderful and um, I'm not sure if i'd recommend people to start there or on one of the book of essays, but it's a true crime story that is fascinating, and it's also um, you know, weaving your life into it, and I really enjoyed it. I'm glad well, Pa, thank you so much for taking the time to come on. I've really enjoyed preparing for the interview. Like I said, I've read you for a

long time. I was happy to dig deeper into your work and uh, I've enjoyed this conversation a lot. Yeah yeah, well now thanks, the pleasures all been mine. I hope this works out way all right, Thanks so much. Bye bye, all right, take care bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the one you Feed podcast. Head over to one you Feed dot net slash support