Scribe

Just sweep a table, like, off, like, everything off the table. Be like, I'm Brad Dowdy. Hello, and welcome to episode 194 of the erasable Podcast. It's April again. We got to another April. Congratulations, fellas. And that means that National Poetry Month is upon us tonight. After talking about our usual pencil and paper goodness, the things we've come across since we've last talked, we're each going to read three of our current favorite poems and discuss them a little bit. So. Hey, Andy and Johnny, My two. My favorite couplet. You two are my favorite couplet.

Whatever you want to be, man.

We were in the car today after this, like, school function, and there was some guy from our area who was selling, like, at this school function, he was selling a kid's book that he had written. And he was a former. What did he say he was? He was some kind of, like, scientist. And in his retirement, he's been writing, like, poems, he said in his bio, just for fun. And he wrote this, like, children's book that is a poem about basically, the water cycle. But he has, like, illustrations with it. It was cute. And the kids were both read it out loud in the car, which is fun. And it got to the end. Henry said, I think this is an ab rhyme scheme. And I was like.

I was like, oh, my gosh, that is awesome.

No.

The power of poetry.

I like that this is maybe, like, getting ahead of things for our topic today. But I just put this in the chat. It reminded me of this Shel Silverstein poem. Stupid.

Some dummy built this pencil wrong. The eraser's down here where the point belongs. And the points at the top. So it's no good to me. It's amazing how stupid some people could be.

All right, well, you guys just want to jump into it. And we're. Today we're going to do fresh points before our main topic, which is talking about some favorite poems here for National Poetry Month. So Andy, you want to start us out?

It.

Nice.

Next in line.

They're really nice. Cool.

I had one of those for a minute back. I mean, this was early days of the podcast. I mean, it was like right around when we started doing this. I had one for I think about a year and then I ended up trading it. But yeah, it's cool. I've got a lot of their pens I love. I still love the bolt. That's my. Oh, the bolt. Yeah, that like bolt action one. I love that thing.

Did you.

I haven't really because I was kind of in the middle of some stuff. I actually now I'm feeling like I should have because we started some new. I got some new notebooks. I got those paperage or whatever. Oh, yeah, they were called paper age or paperage. Started those and I should have stickered them up. But we have a in. In person thing happening in Baltimore soon. Johnny, talk again in a minute.

We had some stickers made, so I'll slap some of those on there. And then we given some away. Not related to our place of work. So. Yeah, I hadn't really. Yeah, I'm afraid to put anything on the computer.

The last school. Actually, the last school I was at was the only one that ever gave me a computer. So when I was at that one and I waited until I saw everybody else doing it, and I was like, all right, we're doing this. And I slapped some John Prine stickers all over it. And then I started this one. But I'm working from home. I don't know what people are doing to their computer. So I'm not gonna. I'm just gonna. I'm gonna abstain. But yeah, I'll just start putting them all over my desk.

I went to and I went to Andy's stupid meeting, and all I got was this sticker.

What?

Yeah.

It is sort of a. Like a byproduct of the type. It has like a little. Just a touch of like an extra grip to it. Love this one. I love the look of it. It's like. Like a navy blue that's leaning towards purple or something.

But I thought about that navy blue ink or something like that, which I didn't really.

And they get navy blurple.

Oh my.

That's. I mean, like, those two notebooks are like two of my absolute favorite Baron collaborations. And then this pen just like right there with it. I mean, gosh.

Yay. Yeah.

Nice. I pretty much always have one of some kind with me that has that easy flow refill. The ballpoint. I love the one that it comes with, but I also just. The ballpoint, like, it's a little like more well behaved just with some papers and stuff. But I almost always have one of

This is schmidt Easy Flow 9000. I think it is. Yeah. Easy Flow 9000. Oh, right. I get it in medium. They come in light. I've been curious. They have a jet stream refill. I don't know if we've ever talked about this. It's in the Parker style, which is pretty awesome. But they're just like the Schmidt easy flow. I can get like it's like 12 of like 12 bucks for like six of them or something. And the. But this Jetstream ones are still a little silly. Like it's like seven bucks for one or something like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Yeah.

I gotta say that the this edition, their belly band game is like beyond cool. Mention that like just the pre colored belly band that like lines up and

Yeah, yeah. I mean that's like.

That's nice.

Amazing. Yeah.

So I'll get mine in the summer. Yeah.

It's funny, I thought you said bougie store.

Well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm going to start out with some. I'm going to get into this and start out hot on something that was big news around here that my kids were very excited about. We had a birthday party which my kids age. It seems like all of their friends are born within the same three weeks. So we have birthday parties every 25, 30 minutes, something like that. It feels like we have one birthday

It was a wild time.

Yeah. But he's a really good friend of mine. He listens to this podcast. Johnny and his kid had a birthday party and it was like a Harry Potter themed birthday party. And they found these just like awesome pencils that looked exactly like a Harry Potter wand.

And they had like fashioned them so that like you couldn't. I could. When Henry got it, I was like, oh, cool, it's a tiny little wand. But. And Lila had one too. But they even like taper it at the end and so I didn't even notice that it was a pencil. And they have it like sort of painted or dyed brown on the outside, but it essentially is like a mini jumbo pencil that has like a wand handle at the end. I'll send you guys a picture of it, but I just thought it was awesome. So I haven't followed up with him to like find out where he got it. But yeah, it was pretty cool. I see a link. Is this. That is it. That's the one.

Yep, that's the one.

Yeah, pretty good. I'M writing with one right now.

I mean, they're on the harder side, but not like terrible.

Yeah, those are. That's it. And they were. They're pretty cool. Especially if you're kids. I mean, especially.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I see it. Yeah, I see it. Yeah, I think they did the. There's the option that gives you like the. There's like the pencils plus the glasses. I think they did that because they all came on with Harry Potter glasses. So pretty awesome.

Is it a working broom, too? No way.

You can use it in the shower, you can use it in the bathtub. You can use it upside down. There's a throwback to an old episode. All right, so now that we've gotten past that in ports. Important piece of news with a pencil wand. New Blackwing. So we alluded to this. We were talking about that field notes and Blackwing collab. Yeah. So they have new Blackwing edition, the Blackwing 20, which mine are on the way. I don't have them in hand yet because I'm not a subscriber anymore. But they did a D and D themed pencil.

Tabletop games themed. Sorry. Like it says on there was. I like chess, mancala and Senate. Yeah, that's why it comes with a 20 sided die.

Yeah. Because you know, when you're playing chess, you know what you need a 20 sided die. I do.

but a very cool pencil. I am very excited to get these in. It's got that. What do you call that pattern that's on it? It's like a. Oh, polyhedron. There it is. Yeah. Polyhedron design inspired by the gaming dice in the Subscriber Extra, which I guess I'm not getting sad, but is D and D dice. I say sad, I don't play D and I don't plan on ever playing D and D. I've talked before about how I love listening to D and D podcasts.

to other people play it.

Yeah, Ecosahedron. Okay, so each pencil features polyhedron Design, but ecosahedron. Okay, all right, all right.

I was assuming when they said it was tabletop games, I was like, okay, so this is for, like, scoring uno. That's cool. They, like, teamed up with Uno and then I got

Oh, that'd be awesome.

And they managed to do something a little bit different each time, which is cool. And I saw my band played a gig on Friday and we played at a place, this really awesome place in Johnson City here that's called Mulligan's Gaming Pub. And it's an Irish pub crossed. And it's huge. I mean, it's like, way bigger than you think it should be, but it's an Irish pub and restaurant mixed with a super nerdy board game store. It is awesome. And it's, like, big. They have a good stage and good food. It's great. So we just. And so when I was there, I like, mentioned this to him. I was like, you might want to start selling these while they've got them, because I think your would freak out for these. But yeah, it's really. It's a really cool place. You go in, they've got, like, a stage, they have an Irish pub and like, a restaurant, but then the walls are just lined with, like, really intense, like, awesome, nerdy board games. And if you buy food, then you can play the games and they sell all the, like, stuff.

We need to make one.

The Minor Leagues.

Okay.

Well, yeah. Well, I'll get right on. All of our 17 Instagram followers will love that. Minor Leagues. Minor Leagues Tennessee. I think that's what it is, but I don't even remember.

But anyways, we had a lot of fun until I mentioned these to the folks that work there, because we played there a couple times. It's like, you guys should check these Out. And they seemed interesting.

So I think. Yeah, this is a really good edition. I'm very excited to get these in.

I am subscribed to this and you're illegally selling them one by one.

I think John or Andy, you sent me a couple of those. So that's.

Yeah.

Yeah. When you think coffee, you think gold. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

All right, I need no more Put hair in chest. Put hair in chest.

Way ahead of you there. Yeah. Okay.

All right, next thing is Baron. Another Baron Fig squire that we got like, I mean, like back to back. We got him because it's been. I mean, it's been a few weeks since we've made an episode, but like right after one, and then like a couple weeks later we got the Roxane Galen. But the other one is the. An all new form, the Baron Fig Oracle. This new limit, I guess limited edition squire. It is limited edition, right? Yeah. Because they hadn't decided to keep the shape around. But it is a. What do you call it? They're revisiting a previous theme that they did on their pencil and it is hexagonal and it's the same kind of design. You can roll it and make some sort of like predictions. You're like magic eight ball pencil or magic hold yours yet? Magic. Of course I have. Yeah. It's a magic magic.

I'm not rolling this magic six ball.

Trying to think of six sides. Magic six ball. But yeah. And then this is my. So noticeably. It is not the normal Baron Fig Squire shape that people sort of take. Umbrage with because of it just rolling out the boot. We've talked about like, oh man, if it had a clip, but also, I mean if it had a clip, that would sort of ruin things, I guess. It's just such a good looking pencil or pen. But this one. And I'll do the sound effects here. The magic thing about this one, that was the sound of me dropping it on my desk and it not rolling.

Yeah, it's like the opposite of inventing the wheel where you're like putting flat sides on it. I mean, so it's like I'm not like making fun because I think this looks amazing. It's got this sort of like whatever we call it, like gunmetal slate gray kind of color to it. And this really pretty looking. It looks like a Duracell battery. Like a six sided Duracell battery with a bunch of like prediction language and spades and hearts on the side. But it writes good like they always do. But just that factor is. Just makes a huge difference. I've used this one more than I've used a lot of others. At least in the first couple weeks that I've had it. So what do you guys think of this one? Love it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Probably. It's definitely a fatter shape. So like those, the sharp hex. Because I've. I'm the first one here to like whine about sharp hexes and because of my delicate musician's hands, that's actually the opposite of what they should be. Maybe I'm not playing enough, but. But yeah, but it works and it's really comfortable and I really love this thing.

Yeah.

Ish.

Oh, it's a good question.

Not like publicly. Maybe they might have Because I feel like if we've made private ones, they probably made ones for other people. I don't keep up with like the collector market or whatever.

Yeah. Really good looking. So like two like home runs, I think.

From Baron's Egg. So thank you for letting us take a look at these because these are really awesome.

I didn't.

money or trade lifetime supply of notebooks.

He can spare a quarter of his collection.

Yeah. Say. I don't know how you could survive that. All right, cool. Well, that's it for me. So let's get into main topic. We're talking about poetry. It is National Poetry Month. We're going to do another episode coming up related to poetry. But we thought it'd be fun to share some of our favorite poems right now. So Andy, do you want to start us out and just like maybe start with one that you picked and we'll just go from there?

Oh, that's good. Yeah.

Yeah.

Sure.

To me. Thanks. I like it.

He's leaving a lot behind though. Yeah. Prolific dude.

So do it. I'm taking this a little different direction because. And I don't mean to make light of things but just we. And we're going to talk about this I think more in the next episode. But so I. This was like a few weeks ago when I did this. But actually before I even get there, I want to mention something. Let's put this in the show notes. So I've talked about Maggie Smith before who's a pretty like well known poet these days, which is kind of seemingly an oxymoron or something that she's a well known poet like. But she's like she became viral from this poem called good Bones that she wrote which is a really incredible poem which I'm going to read. I'm kind of cheat and read that one real quick. But she has a substack that I started following. It is fantastic and it is called for dear life and she actually just came out with a memoir that just came out this week that's called you could make this place beautiful and I recommend picking that up. But she on her substack and I'll put the link in there because I think it's still available as Like a free, free post. She has a post that's called poems that make you glad to be alive. And so she wrote that when she, in like 2017, she was like going through this really difficult time in her life. She was just going through a lot with her family and her husband, he had little kids. But anyways, she decided that she was going to start compiling poems that made her glad to feel alive, like glad to be alive. And so she has this really incredible list of poems and she's linked to a bunch of them, so I recommend going there. And she linked as many as she could for the post. So check it out. Check out the, those poems. But her poem. Yeah, yeah, I'll read this one. So this is Good Bones by Maggie Smith, which is pretty incredible. Life is short Though I keep this from my children Life is short and I've shortened mine In a thousand delicious ill advised ways A thousand deliciously ill advised ways I'll keep from my children. The world is at least 50% terrible and that's a conservative estimate Though I keep this from my children. For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird for every loved child a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake 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 shithole chirps on about Good bones. This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.

Yeah. So that is a really incredible poem by Maggie Smith. Yeah. And I actually wasn't planning to read that before we got on, but I wanted to share that list. And I have two other poems I was going to read, but I guess maybe I just won't have time for them because her list is really incredible and there's a lot of amazing poems on there. And then that's the poem that just.

Can't talk about Maggie Smith without reading that. Andy, you got another one?

But actually, yeah, I was gonna say her collection. Her, like, collected poems that they put out a few years ago. It was, like, right after she passed away. I think it's called Devotions. I mean, I think I read that every other day. I mean, I pick that up so much. She is. She's really incredible. Yeah.

It is Mary Oliver's, like, first draft.

It's the Coney island book. What was it called? Coney island of the Mind or something like that. I just remember that with my, like, high school, like, beat poetry phase. I remember finding that and being.

Gosh, now I need to find it. All right, sorry, I interrupted you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, Johnny, I'm looking at this right now at that book. It looks incredible. And one of my favorite poems of all time is in it. Try to Praise the Mutilated World by Adam Zagajewski. Or Zagajewski. Whatever. Oh, gosh. I discovered that song because it was mentioned in a Over the Rhine song. There was like this line where they say, like the poet says to praise the mutilated world. And I was like, who says that? Shakespeare? Oh, no, it's this like semi contemporary poet. But it's a really amazing poem. So I'm definitely checking out this collection.

Bottles.

Yeah, she might be like my new favorite poet. I mean, like, she's incredible. Yeah. I mean, I've read some of hers recently and like, that poem, I don't know if I've ever read it before, but I mean, just hearing you read it, that's a really incredible. And like, with me, I think so much about songwriting these days. Like, I just hear like, the kinds of, like, language she uses and the way she uses words that just makes me want to write a song, which is kind of what I'm always. What I'm always looking for.

The six cups of coffee and.

That's wonderful.

And. Yeah. And she was. You said she was married to Donald Hall?

My original love and, like, reverence for Donald hall was before I realized that, like, I had read any of his poetry, like, before I realized that he was even a poet was because he was my favorite. He was my favorite interviewee on the Ken Burns baseball documentary, which I've watched like a dozen times. The way he talks about baseball is like, we should hang out, man. Like, I feel like we be friends. It's like a poet talking about baseball. I just need a Ouija board at this point, I guess. But yeah, because he passed away, didn't he? Yeah, fairly recently. Yeah. It was like, within the last. Yeah. I mean. Yeah. I wish I could, man. He would. He's really incredible. And now I'm like, like eager to learn as much as I can about. About Jane Kenyon, too.

2018.

That's. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, speak. Speaking of dead poets. Yeah.

There should be. Oh, yeah. Well, this one is about a poet who died very recently. I think it was in January, Charles Simic. And this is a poem of his called Stone. Go inside a stone that would be my way. Let somebody else become a dove or gnash with a tiger's tooth. I'm happy to be a stone from the outside, the stone is a riddle. No one knows how to answer it. Yet within it must be cool and quiet. Even though a cow steps on at full weight, even though a child throws it in a river, the stone sinks slow, unperturbed, to the river bottom, where the fishes come to knock on it and listen. I have seen sparks fly out when two stones are rubbed. So perhaps it is not dark inside after all. Perhaps there is a moon shining from somewhere as though behind a hill. Just enough light to make out the strange writings, the star charts on the inner walls.

Yeah, It's a really incredibly beautiful poem. I remember the first time that I like. I basically, like, rediscovered. I remember reading that. I think sometime it was like, I was in college, and there was. I had one professor who really liked Simic, and I found it and I didn't, like, fully appreciate it, and then he passed away. And there's a really awesome Instagram account called Poetry Is Not a Luxury, and they basically, like, post poems.

It's really good. And shortly after he died, I think that's where I was, like, scrolling, and they had, like, whoever runs that, like, he or she had posted that poem and just smack me in the face. And it almost like, it was like that ratatouille moment where, like, he tastes the ratatouille and he, like, zooms back to his childhood, but I zoom back to college and, like, it's like. I remember reading this poem, and this was, like, the one that I, like, synced up with a really amazing poem. That, like, idea of, like, something as simple as a stone can be, just alive, like, full of, like, mystery. And I really, really love that poem.

Yeah.

It did, but poetry tends to do that and be afraid of that. But this was great. I mean, the poems that you all read, I hadn't read or I don't have any memory of reading any of those, so I appreciate you guys bringing those in because I want to dig back into them and read them after the podcast and read More stuff by them. I've read a little Ferling Getty, but he was the only one. And then Jane Kenyon. I've read a little bit too, but now both of those I just want to. I want to dive into. So thank you for sharing.

Yeah, totally. That'd be a good thing to come back to every once in a while. Maybe that's one of our rotation of like opening things. Like what's a poem you're enjoying right now? Because I think that it really, like lends itself well to just like talking about what's important to you right now. And the things that are. Yeah. On your mind. And the things that are striking you or the things that are. There's a. There's another great phrase from Maggie Smith, the poet that I talked about earlier, which I really just like envy the way she talked about this. I actually use this term with my kids. She says that her and her kids, when they see something like unusual or something beautiful that just like makes them stop. Their family calls them beauty emergencies, which I really like. There's like, her kids will just be like, there's a beauty emergency. And she'll come out back and there's like an owl in the tree or something. But I like any chance I can get to. And poetry can give us those beauty emergencies too. All right, well, thanks, guys.

Yeah, that was wonderful. Well, we're gonna, we're gonna call it a night on this and, and you'll. We'll be talking to you soon. We're gonna actually talk about poetry again on the next episode likely, or at least one of the next couple episodes. So stay tuned. We'd like to start by thanking our Patreon producers. If you haven't supported us on Patreon or if you haven't checked out our Patreon, you can find it on our website at Erasable Doc. Erasable Podcast, sorry. Erasable Us slash Patreon. And these are our producer level patrons. So Liz Rotunda, Melissa Miller, digitaltent Tech Angie. Aaron Bollinger, Andrew Austin, Tara Whittle, Ida Umphers, David Johnson, Phil Munson, Donnie Pierce, Bill Black, Tom Keakley, Andre Torres, Paul Moorhead, John Cappellouti, Steve Franscali, Aaron Willard, Millie Blackwell, Michael Diolosa, Tana Feliz and Sipe, Joe Crace, Michael Hagan, Bill Clow, Mary Collis, Kathleen Rogers, Kelton Wiens, Hans Noodleman and John Wood. Thank you so much for your support. If you haven't checked that out, we actually just released a new episode of Indelible. So go. If you want to listen to that, support us on Patreon. You'll get to hear. That's where these alter egos talk about the inky Spend more time talking about the inky side of the writing world. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram raceablepodcast. We're also on Facebook, of course, in the wonderful Facebook group. You can find that at Facebook. You find our Facebook group there. You can also find our Facebook page where you can like us and get some updates about the podcast. Thank you so much for listening tonight. And Andy, where can people find you on the Internet?

and I am on Instagram @timothywasson and on Twitter imwasson. So thank you so much for listening to episode 194 of the erasable podcast and we will talk to you soon.