The Long View with Leslie Zane

SPEAKER_02 0:01

The laws of California, do I have your permission to record this conversation?

SPEAKER_03 0:04

Yes, you do. May it go far and wide.

Gramps Jingle

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Gramps just make shit up.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

I met Leslie

Intro: I met Leslie

SPEAKER_02 0:46

in 2005 in an aerobic kickboxing class of all places. I was teaching three classes a week. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Making stuff up again, Gramps. And Leslie and her then teenage daughter Cassie, they attended regularly. They were always pleasant, always friendly, right up until the moment I held a boxing focus pad in front of them. Then with one nod, polite society and their genteel ways left the room with a Kia. Well over time we became friends, sharing music, dinners, lots of laughter, lots of wine, and our medical conditions, as people of quality often do. The Longview is Leslie's latest in her three books of published poetry, and I am very pleased to have it. I suspect she also has notebooks, folders, files, and possibly a hidden bunker full of unpublished writing. Writers call it creative process. Some call it obsessive compulsive disorder. I'm just glad she does it. Leslie's poems feel born from long hikes, which she does often, and close attention to details of flora and fauna and friends. Her work took me from chuckling out loud to unexpectedly holding back tears, which personally I found emotionally inconvenient. She makes me think about what I'm reading and what I'm feeling, sometimes at the same time, and which is a lot to ask of a man who occasionally loses his glasses while he's wearing them. But mostly I'm grateful for Leslie's friendship and for her talent and her courage to put her words into the world. Join us in our conversation, won't you?

SPEAKER_03 2:18

Today's my 75th birthday. Hey, happy birthday. I'm finally caught up to you. Finally, finally. I worked out with my trainer earlier. He's gonna have me do 75 push-ups. And I'm like, that's not happening.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

You could hold the plank for 75 seconds, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:36

I did 40, but on my knees, you know, over an hour.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

You're an animal, Leslie.

SPEAKER_03 2:41

No, I that's you know, I I've been in a boot for six weeks, a walking boot. So yesterday I've been told I can transition out. So the podiatrist talks to me like he's Dr. Seuss, you know, these very short sentences. One hour a day increase without the boot. So when I see you in two weeks, I said, I'll be out of the boot, not in two days. I got it.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Dr. Seuss, there's gotta be a poem there somewhere.

SPEAKER_03 3:15

Yeah, I know. I'm I'm working on like something in my head about the boot.

SPEAKER_02 3:19

Well, first of all, thanks for allowing me this time. Well, listen, I have questions. I hope you don't mind. Yeah, I didn't send them to you because you did say that you were gonna think about what you wanted people to do.

SPEAKER_03 3:29

And then I have some in my head. Yeah, and we'll see if we could do a mind meld.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

Well, exactly. That and what I've found over the few podcasts that I've actually published is that question leads to other questions, and all of a sudden the ideas are just sort of flying around. And it's those conversations that are more interesting. Speaking of stimulating conversations, if you could sit down to lunch with any author, living or deceased, what would you order?

SPEAKER_03 3:56

Oh, what would I order?

SPEAKER_02 3:58

Duck. Of course, duck.

SPEAKER_03 4:00

That's the one thing Larry doesn't make.

SPEAKER_02 4:02

Duck.

SPEAKER_03 4:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:03

Well, listen, to be more serious here, your other publications here. In fact, I have my my library working here with all the good stuff you got. There you go. There are a broad range of topics. It's you know, stuff that goes through your mind, and many of them resonate with me. And uh, we've talked about these things, but the whole issue of memory and aging and grief, and what do you find are your most fertile prompts?

SPEAKER_03 4:30

Huh, that's a good question. Lately I've been working on a series of poems called X Miles from Home. So we went to Farmington for a weekend, and that's whatever, 230 miles from home. I wrote about little house finches that was zero miles from home. So I get an idea because we were doing these weekend trips, and people don't really know. Well, people I know who don't live here don't know that much about northern New Mexico except for Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Taos. So I thought, well, let me do a series, and it would be X miles from home. Dad just came from, we were doing these weekend trips, and a lot of them are to Pueblos, uninhabited Pueblos, like Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, and they mean so much to the both of us. And to Larry's dad, he had made a list of all the ones he wanted to go to, and a lot of them he hadn't. So we're going through his list, trying to give that gift to Larry's dad, who's no longer here. So that's one prompt. I just get a grouping in mind. But I've been along to this writing workshop probably for about five years now. There's six of us. And she was the poet laureate in San Mateo County, Caroline Goodwin. She did the quote on the back of the book. We meet for two hours every week. We meet for six weeks, then we take six weeks off. And even though I may have a whole series of poems, what she does, she has this huge bookcase behind her. She goes like this, opens up to four pages, sends it to us and says, you know, a phrase, something, an image, whatever you get from this, run with it. So the one for this week, which I brought with me, it was this poet, I can't remember his name. It's a four-minute poem and it's called Because. And every beginning of every sentence is because. So sometimes I just need a tiny little nudge. Nail. Okay. You know, I think we've discussed, I have an interesting form of OCD. It's not straightening the fringes or making sure the door is locked or the stove's off. It's once I start a poem, I have to kind of hear a click, not a physical one, that when I know it's done. I was a little resistant about the workshop years ago because I'm handing in stuff that I am saying, I got the click, I'm done. And it's so nuanced some of the suggestions they make that I'm okay with it. The prompts come either from my head or just somebody saying, Whisper, okay, I'm gonna write about whisper. For me, New Mexico is about the antiquity of this land. You know, I grew up in New York City and you could see this much of sky. And here, I mean, when I moved here in 1983, that was the biggest thing I had to get used to because you could see almost to Albuquerque, and that's 60 miles. So here it's the walls. I am fascinated by Adobe. So Adobe shows up a lot lately in my poems. I mean, the other thing I'm fascinated by, and I have a book I haven't read about, uh, asequias. There are these ancient waterways. It's an irrigation system, and they still have people who are in charge of asechias. They let the water in and out depending on what's going on. So there's this height that we do, and you pass the asequia with the big thing to turn. And it's such an ancient practice of irrigating the land, not totally dependent on snowfall or rainfall. There's something about the ancient part of the city and state that calls to me, maybe because I grew up in the ultra modern New York City.

SPEAKER_02 8:19

Every time I talk with you or read something from yours, and the Longview is no exception, lots of SAT words, things that I have to look up. Oh yeah. Lenticular clouds. Oh I've seen one in Tahoe with the family years ago, and we were just marveling at this spaceship hanging in the sky over the Sierras, and none of us knew what it was called. And we were all too lazy to look it up. And then, of course, I see it several times in a couple of your poems, and I'm going, finally, because I had to look it up.

SPEAKER_03 8:51

You're welcome.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

So thank you very much for that.

SPEAKER_03 8:53

Yeah, I thesaurus.com is open on my computer all day, every day. I mean, even for the word May or something, sure. I I get I want a two-syllable word, I want it to start with a D. I mean, it gets really, I mean, Leary always said, and when I first met him, your poems don't rhyme. And I said, they have an internal rhyme. You know, if they're read right, there is a rhythm. But that was lenticular. I just typed in spaceship cloud.

SPEAKER_02 9:23

I love that. Do you ever use rhyming dictionaries?

SPEAKER_03 9:27

It's rare. I didn't use it at all for this book. I get where I want to go somehow about that.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

I know this as your third book, but I would imagine there may be some other stuff in a drawer or a file cabinet or banker's boxes where there's material that looks a whole lot like a book. Is that true?

SPEAKER_03 9:49

Well, there's my graduate thesis.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

Ah, there we go.

SPEAKER_03 9:53

Which I don't even know where it is, but what was that called? God, that was like 1983, maybe? No, it was 82. Day Cries. It was called Day Cries. So that's another 70 poems somewhere, probably in the basement. Putting together this book. It's longer than I really wanted it to be, but it had everything in there that I wanted, and I left out a bunch. And now when I go through, I'm like, maybe I didn't need that one. But people have responded to such different ones in here. I thought, okay, maybe this was the way it was supposed to be.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

You know, sometimes I see you as a Carol King types in New York, sitting in your room writing. And I would imagine that long before your uh graduate thesis, there were things you were turning in for teachers' critique. And that was what back in the 70s, right? When all that was happening. How do you think your voice and your thoughts have changed since those early days? Well, how would you critique yourself as that teenager versus what's going on now?

SPEAKER_03 11:06

And that's that's a great question. Maybe if I tell you the song I listened to incessantly that age will kind of help. Kat Stevens Father and Son and Simon and Garth Funkel's I Am a Rock. Those were my songs. I just felt like I was the only person like me. I felt had some friends in high school, but so I I felt outside, other than so writing all these little scribbles I put on a wall or journals with magic markers. So that voice was so fragile. I would be so protective of that voice now. And so much so I threw out all those, I threw out every journal because I didn't want Cassie when I'm gone, for her to like who was this person? I mean, I want her to know the way I am now. She doesn't need to hear the drama and trauma that got me here. I don't feel like right now I tap into that vulnerable voice as much because I don't need to. I can look outside and notice the adobe or the aceikas or you know, that little cute poodle on the bench or something. But it was so emotionally overwrought. And I'm sitting in a rapping chair and listening to father and son.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

Yeah, I've just recently revisited Kat Stevens' work and because he was quiet.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:35

And uh, and uh, but he's but he's back out there and I actually heard an interview about the father's son, you know, the Did you? Yeah, his explanation of what he was trying to do, you know, was for a play that he was writing for two people, the father and the son. And uh it was interesting to hear him him tell that story.

SPEAKER_03 12:52

Maybe it's one of those songs whoever's listening to it just I wasn't a father, I wasn't a son. I didn't have that kind of relationship with my parents, but something.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Here's a question. The three-point font, is that intentional? That's some really small fonts.

SPEAKER_03 13:10

Oh, you know, I a friend in Arizona said the same thing. It's modeled after an Ada Lamone poetry book. It's the same font and the same side. I think again, we can go back to the OCD in me and how something looks on the page, but you're the second person to comment on it. Even when I hand in my stuff on Sundays, I'm the only one handing in 10.5. Okay, 12. And 12 to me is like a billboard.

SPEAKER_02 13:41

At first, I you know, when I first looked at it, my first thoughts were damn, you know, this is but what happened right there after that, and honestly, I I probably read half of you half of the stuff the first time I opened the I just couldn't I couldn't stop. But I appreciated the requirement of me to look carefully, and then sort of following the format had its own rhythm and challenge to it, but it slowed me down. And by slowing down, that actually helped me understand and question and it was a whole uh exercise. So so thank you very much. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_03 14:15

Yeah, you can thank Ada Lamone. Ada, I'm not familiar with Ada, but he was a uh New Mexico poet laureate.

SPEAKER_02 14:21

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 14:21

Well, I would wonder wonderful work.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

I will check that out. Speaking of serendipity, I have a longtime friend. We grew up together on the Atlanta Fire Department. His name's Hank Christ. And Hank's a writer, but mostly in the technical side. He's written several books on the fire service and emergency rescue and management. So he got a copy of the book, and then he he calls me. He says, Thank you very much. This is really excellent. But he says, I opened up the book just by chance, since it's a poetry book. You're supposed to be able to open them up anywhere. And he landed on page 42, which is Signs of Hollywood. And he found that extraordinary. He says, This is sort of spooky. And I said, Well, what do you mean? Well, you know, it's about the fires there in Los Angeles or Santa Ana. And Hank, even though I've lost my passion for the fire service and response, and you know, I don't get excited when I see the fire trucks go by anymore. Hank, he just turned 80 and he is right there just like we were kids back in the 1970s. So he was just taken with the words and how uh serendipitous it was for him to open it up on that particular page.

SPEAKER_03 15:28

And the prompt for that, I was at uh an exhibit in the museum here, and it was Hollywood. So it was someone's depiction in the 50s while those fires were raging. I have a fire app on my phone because there are so many fires here, and we have go bag just because we live near the National Forest. Yeah, you know, it's up the road, maybe eight miles. But you know, we just want to, you know, we every now and then was okay, if we have to leave, how are we getting out of here?

SPEAKER_02 15:57

Well, what kind of fire load is that? For some reason, I have your uh home not in a fire hazard area, but do you think it's well it's drought, severe drought, no snow melt, trees everywhere.

SPEAKER_03 16:09

We just were in a development and fire mitigation guy came out and said everything had to be five feet from all the houses. So the development had that done. So we feel a little better about it, but it's real. Yeah, if you look up well, if you look up Mora County, I think two years ago, the Hermits Fire, huge. Tell your friend he should start looking at New Mexico fires.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

I will let him know that.

SPEAKER_03 16:38

Today, for instance, there's what did Larry say? There's a fire up north near Tres Piedras, and we have all the windows closed, and we have the AC on anyway, but it's so smoky out there.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

I have a couple more questions that I want to ask, but I think what I'd like to do is just open this up for you to, from your point of view, what you want people to know about your poetry or any of your writing. Probably end up buying a couple of more of these, and uh have some more friends that are interested. Everybody I've sent it to is just really pleased that I I thought as much about them as I did for sending them that book.

SPEAKER_03 17:16

Well, thank you. I will be reading everyone at the Santa Fe Public Library in October.

SPEAKER_02 17:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 17:24

They they were booked until then.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

What's the date on that, Les? And I guess more importantly, will they stream that?

SPEAKER_03 17:29

You know, I haven't asked them that. They do all the promo, which is nice. Larry wanted to bring his sound system, but I think it's October 23rd.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

October 23rd, got it.

SPEAKER_03 17:42

At 3:30 mountain time.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

Well, if it's at all possible to sign into that, I would love to do that.

SPEAKER_03 17:49

Yeah, no, I'll I'll mention that to them. Um, I had 50 people at my first poetry reading. It was standing room only, which was um when I saw everyone there, my first line was, you know, I hope you all show up at my funeral, because this is great.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

That's such a Leslie line.

SPEAKER_03 18:11

Larry's like, you know. Some people, I think they would be uncomfortable if they had written some of the things I write about. That's what I've heard. I want people to know that I don't do it to push boundaries or push edges writing about mastectomy or colon cancer. I mean, it's I try to put humor in desperate things because that's just how I see the world. You know, there's got to be some little nugget of something. And I feel with some people, it's been helpful with their journeys through some medical challenges. But it's, I'm not doing it for that reason. I'm not thinking, oh, this is like a self-help book. I'm doing it for me to get it out of my head. I'm doing it for me to see, take a step back from that whole experience. But I have found that people have found it confessional in a way, which isn't wasn't mine, not that that's bad, but that wasn't because I think of it as a poem. You know, it's been crafted, it's been worked on. Whereas I think of all those journals I threw out, which were confessionals. So, you know, I wasn't crying when I was writing these, you know, I just I think people, if if it were them writing some of these, they would be overcome with emotion. And that was not the case for me in any of these. And if it's been helpful to people, then that's a gift I didn't realize was coming.

SPEAKER_02 19:47

Well, I think that's when the gift is the most appreciated personally. I have not seen them as self-help in any way. The one thing that I'm in awe of is that, you know, since we know each other personally, and I know many, not all, of the challenges that you've experienced, the combination of the humor and vulnerability is the thing that strikes me the as the most powerful because I think that adding or finding humor in stuff that is, well, let's just call it what it is, it's shit and it sucks. Yeah, and it's hard. And to find humor that in some cases probably makes people uncomfortable. And that's and that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_03 20:26

Yeah, no, it's interesting. Was I not taking the situation seriously? You know, and some people who I know pretty well didn't know any of this. A friend of mine who lives in newer, I just zoomed with her. We haven't really talked like girlfriends since I left. And she got the book, and then, you know, this barrage of emails. Oh my God, I don't, you know, so people are feeling badly in retrospect. And, you know, that's not my intention. And it's not my intention. Oh, I told you, but I didn't tell you. You know, it's I don't send emails out to 40 people updating them. You know, it's my life and my challenges, and I do it the way I do it. But one of the poems in here, I think is about radiation. And I was saying the beach, the beach, the beach, trying to do the breathing. A friend of mine here was going to radiation. She had the same time with the same people. I gave her that poem before it was in the book, and she was pretty freaked out about her situation. She had a laugh because she said, Oh, yeah, you know, when you have Maria, she's, you know, going to tell you hold that breath, another 10 seconds, or you think you're gonna die. So, in that case, that was my little gift to her. You know, this I know it's interesting because I think from the way I grew up, and I think you probably know this, I had an older brother who died when he was 12, and I was 10 months old. So I was pretty verbal. I think a Lot of the way I drew the world is just keep going. That's how the family you just kept going. Nothing stopped at that time. It was pre-therapy for anybody. You know, everyone kept going. So somehow that just became part of my DNA. You just keep going. Yeah, I have to go to radiation, but I'm gonna go play pickleball later. You know, it's part of my life. It's not my, I'm not identifying by it, identified by it. And I know not everyone can do that. And I don't want people to go through, I mean, you know, tragic circumstances to come out with some robust, yeah, bring it on life. But that it's just, I mean, Larry continually tells me when something's going on with him. I am not you, Les, because I'm more uh, all right, let's go. And I think that comes out with some of the poems, and it's just how I navigate life.

SPEAKER_02 22:58

Well, it is a gift, Les. I will tell you that.

SPEAKER_03 23:01

And uh and I put I am grateful I would be choking with words if they didn't come out on a page somewhere. What I would like to do, if you don't mind, I have a poem I'm going to hand in Sunday, my workshop. This was the prompt based on the word because. And if you wouldn't mind, I would like to read that.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

Oh, please.

SPEAKER_03 23:21

It's a little different from everything that's in the book. And this is again, just write a poem. Every line has to start with the word because. I do that for my workshop. I have it at 12. This is called adrift. Because my parents were first generation Americans, because I was born in Manhattan and lived in the Bronx. Because we moved to the projects and the skyline came into view. Because I stared out the windows all facing west. Because I took ice skating lessons in Central Park on early Saturday mornings. Because I went to Radio City Music Hall each month when the show changed. Because I ate Kasha Kanishes in Far Rockaway on summer weekends. Because I attended college in Harlem and worked in Gimbal's basement at night. Because the subway became my place of refuge and escape. Because I worked at the Met Columbia University Parsons School of Design. Because I worked at Mid-Manhattan Library, giving me access to different lives. Because I fell in love with a man who lived in the West Village. Because I drove out to Montauk Point when my emotions were raging. Because the sunrise was a reprieve after a night of tiresome words and threats. Because Ellis Island is part of my history, not a tourist trap. Because my man moved to Germany and left me all his crap. Because Times Square became less gritty and more family friendly. Because I frequented Upper East Side bars and drank too much. Because the cockroaches took over the apartment when I stayed away. Because my public voice was getting shrill when shoved on sidewalks. Because a man grabbed my breast and I punched him in the face. Because my parents moved out west and the city felt so much less. Because I was getting hostile when men would flirt, quoting Patty Smith. Because I walked in favorite neighborhoods and was feeling adrift. Because I needed a break and left with a definite intention to return. Because my subtenant never paid the rent, I was evicted from 2,000 miles away. Because I felt your displeasure, I can never move back. Because you were lost to me, other cities begrudgingly became home. Because I am a New Yorker, none of this really matters.

SPEAKER_02 26:07

Wow. Very cool. That was like, well, first of all, about half of that are things that I did not know.

SPEAKER_03 26:13

And of course that's my New York persona.

SPEAKER_02 26:15

Yeah, and it pulls me in. What else don't I know? So I'm looking for the next line. Nicely done. I'd be anxious to hear what your my cohorts. Your cohorts. Yeah. And speaking of that, what is it that you guys do to each other, with each other, with regards to your creativity?

SPEAKER_03 26:35

So um Caroline Goodwin is an excellent facilitator. So I'm the one that always follows the prompt. Other people are handing in stuff that they're working on. I'll just say that. Some of them are working on different chat books. There's a lot of grief in this group, like Tinkerbell compared to the challenges other people have had in their life. Also, the women, and it didn't come that way together, obviously, but the woman who runs the workshop, her husband, Nick Goodwin, died in a mountain bike accident in Monterra 10 years ago. And then she had a daughter who died when she was two. So there's a lot there. There's another gentleman in the class whose son committed suicide 12 years ago. Woman in the class was abused. Another woman, the mother left, abandoned her. So for some reason, this is the group I'm in. So I'm usually the light and lively one. I'm following the prompt, and they're still working on what they need to work on, and that's totally fine. So what she does, and it's an interesting system. So somebody, she has an order, somebody, let's say I'll read because, and then she'll have somebody else read the same poem. The author reads it, and then somebody else in the class reads it. So this different emphasis. I mean, it's just it's interesting. And then she's always the first to critique, you know, and she's like, couldn't be more enthusiastic. Oh, and the other woman in the class who's actually here this week, and I'm going to meet her for the first time. Her son was in his car and a semi landed on top of him on a freeway in LA, and he's got traumatic brain injury and needs 24-7 care. These are my people, and I love being with them. So Caroline will just, you know, what she loved about it. And then she'll always say, I just have a couple little things. If this were mine, I might consider blah, blah, blah, blah. And then she calls on us. It's such a kind group and a smart group. I'm usually the one talking about, I'm really into the shape of poems, and the others aren't as much. They'll do a lot of block, and I like the spacing and stuff. So I may say you might want to shove that over or whatever. There is a woman in the class who just left another poetry group because she said they were, they weren't critiquing, they were criticizing. And that's a huge difference. So this one, it's depending on who's saying what about what, I'll, you know, run upstairs so I don't forget and change it. Or you just sit with it and you think, okay, I understand from your point of view, but for what I was trying to do, I'm still okay with it. But they're such deep readers. You know, we get the poems, we get everyone's poems at noon on Saturday. So we have it for almost 24 hours. It's serious stuff.

SPEAKER_02 29:35

Excuse my ignorance, but in a group like this, or any writing group, I would imagine. I imagine the purpose is to be better for your craft, to make it more meaningful, to make it more powerful. Is that fair to say?

SPEAKER_03 29:51

A lot of times it's I always think of poems as a sculpture when you keep chiseling and then the form comes out. So a lot of times with this, it's refining. There's one woman in particular who'll use and the, you know, just you don't need those. You know, you're not writing prose. So it's refinement and just seeing how it lands with other readers. Most of them, I have very different. What I want for my poems is different from what they want. There's one gentleman who's a year older than us, and he's just going for his MFA right now. And he wants someone to publish his poem. Or he's sending, they're all sending stuff out to journals, and I just do not have the patience for that. So I like, you know, this is the third one. I like collecting a bunch, self-publishing. I'm fine with that. I just want to get them out. But sending piecemeal, a poem here, a poem there, and then you can't send that poem to another journal until the first one accepts it or not. I don't have many years left to do that. So I'm the only one that self-publishes.

SPEAKER_02 31:00

Well, this has been a true treasure. Thank you so much. No, thank you. And hopefully I'll be able to engineer it so it does justice for what we're trying to accomplish here, which is introduce people to your uh to your work. I think they'll be better people as a result of it.

SPEAKER_03 31:14

And if any of them ever want to reach out personally, feel free to give them my email address to care if I do I turn this off.