Roger Housden on Poetry for Difficult Times

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 m Thanks for joining us. On today's episode, we have Roger Housden who has been

on the show before, back on episode one two. Roger founded and ran the Open Gate, a conference and workshop center in England that introduced the work of Ramdas tikno Han and many others into Europe. His work has been featured many times in the Oprah magazine, The New York Times and Los Angeles Times. On this episode, Eric and Rodger discussed his book Ten Poems for Difficult Times. Happy

New Year everyone. The changing of the years is a time where a lot of people reflect on the year past and think about things they'd like to do differently in the new year. If you're in this place and you're looking at what you'd like to do differently in the new year, and you need a little help get it done, if you'd like to see real change and real transformation in two thousand nineteen, then I encourage you to check out the one you Feed Transformation program. It's

one on one coaching with me. Go to one you Feed dot net slash transform And here's the interview with Roger Hasten. Hi, Roger, welcome to the show. Thank you, thank you. I am happy to have you on your a second time guest. So you're in elite company. Now, there's not been very many of those, so welcome back. We're going to talk about your latest book called Ten Poems for Difficult Times. But before we get into the book, let's start 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 thinks about it for a second, looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.

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. Well, it's the eternal and ongoing parable that you see all over the world, which essentially is the struggle between the light and the dark

in each individual. And so the way in which that plays out in my life is really through the practice of mindfulness and the willingness when I am able to remember two be aware of my own thoughts and feelings, and not to climb on the back of them, but rather to simply give them space and allow them to

be there without identify going with them. And so if a wave of sadness or anger, or whatever it may be, it comes comes into my mind, m the intent, anyway, is to be able to have perspective, not conceptually, but actually viscerally. Two give that feeling space and not identified with And actually it's the same with positive feelings, joy, kindness,

whatever it may be. As long as I think I'm the one being kind, then I'm not really reaping the full fruits of that action of kindness because I'm identifying with it and because I thinking, I'm thinking I'm the good one. So tell me about how poetry helps us with difficult times. Ha ha ha ha, I don't think. I'm not sure you followed what I was saying there, so you skipped to the poetry. I think this is true,

isn't it? Eric? Now I followed you. I follow you about about not taking full credit for our actions, because then the motivation is coming from a place that's less useful to us. But the same with the with the darker emotions. You know, I mean the operative word there is feed. Now you know how do you feed either the good or the bibb wolf. Well, you jump on the back of it, off the feeling, and you go wherever it takes you. Okay, in other words, you believe

it's you. I am angry, I am happy, No, there is anger happening, There is kindness happening. Is that who I am? That's another question. Well, I think we may get back to that topic. It's point as we work through a couple of the poems, because that that idea shows back up. It does what did you ask me? Yes? How does poetry help us in difficult times? In the

aftermath of nine eleven? You know, in New York when people all over the city were wondering, wandering around in a days, the main form of communication you see, you saw on every street and I was there, you saw on every street corner were poems pinned up on the wall. So it was as if this event leven was so unspeakable, you don't know how to what do you say? What do you do? Poetry somehow speaks to the impossible. It actually gives voice to that which is unsayable. So poetry

really reaches down into the essence of human feeling. And ideally, if it's a great poem, it will speak to that essence in as few words as possible, even if it's a fairly long part. Each word will matter and have its place, and it will articulate the readings, the feelings of the reader. In a way that not even the reader herself was able to do. And so you recognize yourself in the part you go, oh my god, that's me.

I totally understand what this guy is talking about. So poetry is invaluable and difficult times because it casts and shows a light on our own challenges from a perspective we may not have articulated before exactly. And one of the things that you mentioned also, the power of poetry is with attention. And you say, when I pay attention, something in me awakens, and that something is much closer to who I am than the driven or drifting self I usually take myself to be. When I pay attention,

I am straightened, somehow brought into a deeper life. And I I love that line that you wrote there and again back to your where we began this, you know, back to that what we take ourselves to be. Yes, you and I must have similar tastes in poems, because several of the poems you had. One is Ellen Bass, who has been on the show and I'm a fan of. Another is Maggie Smith, who will be a future guest on the show, and another is William Stafford, who is someone I surely wish it could be a guest on

the show. Obviously his his time has passed. But I was really struck as I looked through it. You know you've you've picked some of my my favorite poets. And so let's start with Maggie Smith, who actually lives in Columbus, Ohio, where I live. She's in She's a small suburb of Columbus called Bexley. So let's start off with her poem good Bones. Yes, so she wrote this I thing about three years ago. I think, yes, good Bones. Life is short,

though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I've shortened mind in a thousand delicious ill advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill ambised ways I'll keep from my children. The world is at least terrible. That's a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children. For every bird there's a stone thrown at a bird, for every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunken a link. Life is short,

and the world is at least half terrible. And for every kind stranger there is one who would break you. Though I keep this from my children, I'm trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor walking you through a real ship hole chaps on about good bones. This place could be beautiful, right you? You could make this place beautiful. That is such a stunning poem in so many different ways. Tell me about why you chose it for a book about difficult times? How does it help

you with with difficult times? Well, as you say, there's so many layers in this poem actually, and so there's so much to it. I mean, she wrote the poem actually for her children, or at least she wrote it thinking about her children. And I think it was very soon after one of these terrible school shooting tragedies that she wrote this, like, what is how can I protect my children from this world that we're living in? And you know, in this poem, she she clearly exaggerates. I mean,

she's making a point. I mean, this is you know, I mean, for every kind stranger, there's one who breaks you know, the world as at least terrible. Well, you know, we can argue that, but that's not the point. She's making. The point that is terrible as it seems to make it personal. As difficult as my life may seem me

the reader, as difficult as my life may seem. Actually, there's very life that I'm living this very world that I'm living in could be beautiful and to have that sense of the possible Eric I think with she's deliberately painted a really black picture, but then this shaft of light comes at the end, right, not that it's all going to be beautiful, but that it could be beautiful. It's like, you know, you just bought a house and

it's a fixer upper. So she's saying, you know, the world, but not just the world my life, your life as a fixer upper, where my life certainly feels like a fixer upper. You know, there's always stuff to repair, and so she's opening a door there to the possible. And I find that deeply heartening, warming and consoling. So that's

why this bombs in the book. It's also the first powerm in the book, and the reason for that is, you know, it's just so direct, straightforward, and it's speaking for the next generation, our children, like what kind of world are they going to be living in? And are they gonna what are they going to do with it?

I love it for so many different reasons. Also, I love it because it tells the truth, you know, and again, we could argue about whether the world is terrible or what percent, but some some percent is you know, there's yeah, yeah, And so I love that, you know, I love that it tells the truth. And me, I think that's you know, one of the things about you know, when I first looked at Buddhism, that just hit me right over the head.

I was like, ah ha, the truth. Like right here, someone is telling the truth, like okay, sometimes this sucks and um, you know, and then I love the way she, just like you said, at the end, flips it around on you and you know, you could make this place beautiful and it's it's such a great poem. Actually, I love that you say that there, because really it's a bit like a century rendering of the four Noble Truths. Yeah,

you know, the person noble truth is life sucks. I don't think he quite used those terms, but everything is something. Life is suffering. But then at the end of those four Noble truths, the there is a way through. Now. Okay, so he's looking at a whole other level, but essentially that's what she's saying, there's a way through, yes, and that idea of a way through shines through a lot of these poems that you have in this book. Let's go on to the next one that I'd like you

to talk about. And I cannot remember. As I mentioned, we had Ellen Bass on the show and I had to read a couple of poems, and I cannot remember which ones I had her read um off the top of my head if she very well may have read this one, because I love this poem. But why don't you read it for us now and we'll we'll talk a little bit more about all the better. Actually did read it, because you know it's the kind of poem you can read or hear over and over again. All

these are all of these are they are? They really are? Yeah, This palm is called the thing is. The thing is. The thing is. The thing is to love life. The thing is to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it, and everything you've held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the salt of it. When grief sits with you, it's tropical heat, thickening, the air, heavy as water, more fit for gills than lungs. When grief waits you like

your own flesh, only more of it. An obesity of grief, You think how how can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eye, and you say, yes, yes, I will take you, I will love you again. The thing is to love life, to love it even when you've no stomach for it, and everything you've held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled

with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, it's tropical heat, thickening, the air, heavy as water, more fit for gills than lungs. When grief waits you like your own flesh, only more of it and obesity of grief. You think, how can a bo do you withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your poems, a plain face, no charming smile, no violatize, and you say, yes, yes, I will take you, I will love you again. Beautiful. Yeah, you say that you think of her as a zen poet.

What do you mean by that? Alan buses subjects is the ordinary, every day mundaneity of our life. She finds the exceptional in the ordinary, and somehow illumines what seems to be of no value, nothing, a passing moment, whatever, it may be she somehow manages to give her attention to it where most of us would not even have noticed. She notices the hidden line in the ordinary, everyday objects

of our lives and also feelings of our lives. So, you know, remembering another poem of hers, you know, where everything seems designed to be causing her trouble. The dog on the floor is snoring, She's on somebody's couch, which is too short for her. You know, she's in New York.

There's a noise of the street outside, and it's so hot that she could hardly wear anything, and all of this and suddenly, in that she goes, I'm alive, I'm alive, and everything suddenly, the snoring dog, the taxi, our side, everything has its proper and proportionate place in that moment of her life, which is completely irreplaceable. So Eliba shows us that any and every moment of our life is

completely irreplaceable. And she does this by paying attention. So that's why I call him, because I likened her to his end poet. Yeah, back to that topic of attention. Somewhere in the book you quote Mary Oliver, who, in one of her poems says, I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention. Yeah, beautiful line. Yeah, so she's acquainting, isn't she in those lines? You know, a prayer with the giving of attention. It's

really a kind of active devotion, isn't it. You know, when we're actually really attending to someone or something by devotion, I only and you know there's a felt quality that is being conveyed which is deeply intimate. So yeah, these are poems Alambuss's poems of poems of intimacy. And we can only really be intimate when our attention is awake. Yeah.

You also, when you're you're writing about this poem, you say, if we love, we suffer fastest poem reminds us that the only way out of that suffering is through it. We will be brought low by it, softened by it, opened by it, and ushered finally into a love still greater, a love for our own exquisite and painful life as we experience it day by day. And I love that.

And I want to ask you a question about that, because I was having this conversation with somebody the other night and we were talking about how with age, there has been some increase in wisdom and kindness and all of that. But the observation also is that not everybody ages well. Not everybody comes out of suffering opened by it, or um softened by it, or ushered into a love

still greater. So in your mind, what are the components that help us take these difficulties and have them work on us in a way that we would ultimately consider positive. I actually I don't like the way I phrase that, but you get where I'm going. Yeah, it's not that they're positive or negatives, right, Um, I would say that, so they my own experienced personal experience. What can allow suffering to be a part of life that does soften us, that that in some way serves as a kind of

alchemical process and opens the heart? That that can occur when we fully bowed down to whatever it is the suffering. So in this poem by Ellen Bass, she is bowing down to. Now. I don't know what she went through

to be able to write that poem. I suspect she went through a quality or a kind of grief, probably much deeper than I've ever known, But she fully gave herself two in this case, to the grief of her experience, and she also was able through that two open up to a larger life, where the end of the poem, she says, yes, I hold life's face in my hands, and I say I will love you again. I will love you again. So that this is a very dangerous word, but the words surrender comes to mind, and surrender is

not the same as giving up. So you know, I think with you to say that the only way to the other side of suffering is through it means that it never works to deny it. It never works to try and be strong and push it away or to soldier on, even though you may have to soldier on in your life. But internally, I think there has to come a moment when you just let go into the truth of your experience at the moment and let it move through you like a wave. And the point is

you can't do that as a strategy. I was like, oh, no, listen, I know I read that somewhere. You know what you do is it doesn't work. You cannot fake surrender. You can't make it a kind of strategy or a technique. But there can come a moment in our lives, and you know, most is in one way or another probably had a sense of this where we just we give up, but give up not in a sense of being a victim. We know that we cannot make this good on our by our own efforts, you know, our own efforts somehow

not enough. And in that moment when there is that surrender, and what are we surrendering. We're surrendering our attempt to control. In that moment, something else can happen, but there's absolutely no guarantee. So you're absolutely right. I think for most suffering, especially really difficult suffering, actually is backbreaking. It's not a transformational thing necessarily at all. You said it, well, I

do think some some version of of surrender. I think back to what we've talked about, some degree of attention, being willing to pay attention to what's happening with us in the middle of that, and and some of that is, as you said, not always running away from My experience of like deep suffering at points in my life is like, Okay, some of the time I was like, I'll do anything I can to find a way to run away from this.

But then there were other moments whether either I simply couldn't run away, there was no there was no path to allow me to do it, or some other wisdom said okay, stop, you know, stop and and be here for a minute. Those are the things I think that helped to me as some quality of being willing to be with it. I think of what Tara Brock I've heard her ask before, which is, you know, just the

simple question can I be with this? So I think that's great, And I think what you're pointing to there is two different kinds of experience that we have and can have. The one, which is much more common, is happens primarily in our mind up here and up here, you know, we're we're trying to create strategies, we're trying to find a way out, we're trying to manipulate, we're trying to sort things out. We're getting angry, you know,

with the situation, whatever it is. Um when you say stop, he's still for a moment, that does not come from here. It comes from the heart, the different layer or level of experience. And I think what you've just pointed to was for a moment, even a drop upping down into our bodily experience of whatever it is we're experiencing. As I mentioned in the intro. A lot of us spend this time where one year changes to the next, really reflecting on the year prior and looking at what we

would like to do differently in the upcoming year. If you'd like to make two thousand and nineteen the year that you finally take a lot of the things you hear about on this show and put them into practice. If you'd like to get to the point where you're exercising regularly, meditating, eating, well, if there's a creative project, you want to start a business, you want to launch, any of those things, the one you Feed Transformation program

can help you. It's one on one coaching with me weekly and we do daily email checkens to keep you on track. If you'd like to learn more, I invite you to go to One you Feed dot Net slash Transform Again, that's one you Feed dot Net slash Transform. Yeah. I think that it's obnoxious to say to somebody who's in great pain, well, one of the benefits is or

here's a growth experience, right. But what those have done for me is, as somebody who it's very easy to spend my time in my head, is that they force me into my heart. I don't really have a choice about anymore. I'm suddenly there. Yeah, I think when you said that, I sort of realized that that's one of the Again, I don't like this word, but I'll use it for brevity. One of the benefits of of suffering for me is that, um, it takes me to that place. Yeah,

it's one of the opportunities. Really. Yeah, that's a better that's a better word and benefits. Yeah, And there really is no guarantee. So yeah, every moment new moment, you know, because you know, if I bowed down to some great difficulty in my life yesterday and was able therefore to absorb it, it's really about absorbing And doesn't mean to

say that I'll do the same tomorrow, you know. You know. Yeah, Well, And I think that's the thing about a great suffering is we don't have to always handle it gracefully, as you said or or about. And you know, my experience again was a great suffering gives me plenty of opportunities, some of which I actually take for benefit and the others I don't. But but there's enough in it, you know,

there's there's enough in it. But I just am very interested in this question of how to suffering and difficulty make some people better, kinder, wiser, stronger, and and not do that for others. I just think that's such a fundamentally um important question for people who are trying to live a better life, because inevitably, as you know Maggie Smith said early on, you know, a large percentage of of the world is going to be very difficult, and so knowing how to work with that in a skillful

way is so so important. And this, you know again, I think this is what these poems do. They point us in that direction. It just in the direction of possibility. Yep. So I think we have time for one more. If you would be willing to read one more, I'm going to give you a couple of choices and allow you to pick the one that you would like to do.

Either Cutting Loose by William Stafford now you know the Worst by Wendell Berry, or Annunciation by Marie how I think any of those three would be a great thing for us to do with our last poem. Okay, I'm leaning into Annunciation, all right, let's do it. I often don't usually don't read this poem because, um, it's it's very mysterious, and it's the very last poem in the book. And I put it in there because it points to

a whole other dimension of experience, quite out of the ordinary. Right, So this is not unlike Ellen Bass or Maggie Smith, This poem is not dealing with the every day. This is an extraordinary epiphany that happened to Marie. How that, of course, potentially in a different way, it can happen to you or me. So the palm annunciation by Marie. How even if I don't see it again, nor ever feel it, I know it is, and that if once it hailed me, it never does, and so it is myself.

I want to turn in that direction, not as toward a place, but it was a tilting within myself, as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where it isn't. I was blinded like that and swam in what shone at me, only able to endure by being no one, and so specifically myself. I thought I'd die from being loved like that? Can I read it again, these poems, especially this poem, But these poems need to

be ideally read two or three times. Allowed yea to yourself, even if I don't see it again nor ever feel it. I know it is, and that if once it hailed me, it ever does and so it is myself. I want to turn in that direction, not as toward a place, but it was a tilting within myself, as one turns a mirror to flash the light to where it isn't. I was blinded like that and swa um in what shown at me, only able to endure it by being no one and so specifically myself. I thought I'd die

from being loved like that. Such a wonderful poem. One of the things that you say as you're as you're writing about that poem afterwards is we can be blessed at any moment by the startling realization that who we are is so much faster than our familiar identity. Thank you. That's what this poem points to. Yes, Yes, And I love that it made me think of something. Um, it made me think of I was on a I was on a silent retreat with a spiritual teacher. I don't know,

maybe four or five months ago. He's been a guest on the show. Listeners have heard Audi Shanti and that phrase about turning in the direction not as towards a place, but as a tilting within myself. And I just remember him pointing it that, in other words, this sense of that there isn't anywhere really that we can go to be closer to ourselves. We are. There's no move you can make to take you closer to yourself. But that idea of a tilting is just I just I love it.

And it made me think of of I'm not explaining what he said very well, but it was that idea she talks about is not towards a place. We're always trying to move towards something. If I just reorient myself in this way or that way, then I will have this experience and and she points towards that's not it's not a motion towards anywhere, but that the tilting towards myself is a is A is a beautiful way of

saying it. And so this poem is in the book really because you know, it just hint Saddle points to, as you're saying, a far larger reality then the reality that most of us are consumed in day to day, which is the passage of our own challenges and difficulties and and hopes and fears. I'm gonna read a little bit more about what you wrote after that poem, because also I think that the way you say this is

really great. You say how feels that tilting within herself a reorientation, as it were, a recalibration that turns her inner gaze her awareness back on itself and blinds her with its light. Her familiar self has to be blinded. She has to become no one in order to experience her true personhood, her unique core in which she knows

absolutely that she has always and forever loved. And I love that paradox in the poem and the way that you pointed out that is this concept of being so much more than we are, this idea of we're not just this limitedself. The poem talks towards you know, we're so much more than that, and we are absolutely and utterly that at the same time. And it's you know, she says it beautifully and you follow it very well. Yeah, No,

she really does say beautiful. It's just that last line, you know, and able to endure it by being no one and so specifically myself, I mean wonderful. Yeah. Yeah, whatever was happening to her then, you know, there was very clear insight. Yeah, the true nature of things right, right, And I think that that true nature that we've we've you know, you sort of started us off in that direction.

But also what's so interesting to me about that is that it is often by being so utterly focused, with true attention on the specificity of exactly what's here and give being our attention to the very specific, that can open us up to this much greater reality. Makes me think of Leonard cohen Um, who I don't, I won't get this quite right, but in talking about writing about a song once he said, it's by being very specific that somehow you are able to hit a much more general,

broader tone. You know, you know, yeah, And so you don't. You don't talk about a tree, you describe the very tree. But that very specificity and that attention to that level of detail also opens it up to something way bigger than itself. Absolutely, and so a poet, as in that example of Marie House poem, when a writer in general, when a writer or a poet is able so specifically to articulate their own concrete experience, it can be felt

experienced by thousands of other people. In other words, it's through the deeply personal that we can move into the universal certainly throughout yep yep, and it it sounds paradoxical, but it's it's absolutely the way it works. Yea. Well, Roger, thank you so much for taking the time to be

on the show. You and I are going to continue with a post show conversation where we are going to do another poem by William Stafford, who is one of my favorite poets, and we're going to uh talk about William Stafford and we're going to talk about the power of silence. So listeners, if you are interested in that, people who subscribe at the ten dollar level uh get access to post show conversations that you can listen to

write in your podcast player. You also get access to add free episodes as well as an extra mini episode every month. So when you feed dot net slash support for that, well, Roger, thank you so much for another wonderful collection of poetry, and also thank you so much again for taking the time to come on the show with us. Great pleasure, great pleasure. Thank you very much.

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