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All Of It with Alison Stewart
Frederick Joseph’s Poetry Collection, 'We Alive, Beloved'
00:18:58
Poet Frederick Joseph discusses his new book, 'We Alive, Beloved.'
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- [00:00]
A
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You're listening to all of it. I'm Kusha Navadar in for Alison Stewart. Two time New York best Sorry two time New York Times best selling author Frederick Joseph opens his new collection of poems with a quote from the late poet and singer Gil Scott Heron. It goes like these are merely tools used by sensitive men to carve out a piece of beauty or truth that they hope may lead to peace and salvation. In this collection, Joseph excavates some of the more sensitive parts of himself, grappling with concepts such as loss, relationships, masculinity, fatherhood, joy. He has poems titled Notes from Therapy on Days I Am Dying and A Black Man's Smile. His book titled We Alive Beloved is out today and he joins us to discuss. Frederick is a Yonkers, New York raised poet and author. Some of his recent works include the Black Friend in 2020, Patriarchy Blues, Reflections on Manhood, Better Than We Found, Conversations to Help Save the World and the Picture Book for Black Wakanda forever in 2022. Frederick, hey, welcome to all of it.
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A
Thanks for having me.
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B
Absolutely. It's lovely to have you sitting right here across from us in the studio. And also it is publication day, so congrats. Happy publication day.
- [02:02]
A
Yes. Yes. Thanks. Fre Me on Pub Day was actually supposed to be last week, but but we'll do the day before Juneteenth though that I will say. I'll take that. I will take that.
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B
I was gonna say they heard you were coming on the show, but your answer is much better. Let's go with yours. Can you share a little bit about the title, we are Beloved?
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A
Tell me.
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B
Tell us about it.
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A
Yeah, yeah. So for me, one of the things that I've been grappling with coming out of the height of the pandemic is just who we are, right? Who we are as beings, who we are as humans. And I and I feel like there was this moment where everyone was slowing down, especially in New York, clapping for all of the essential workers and making bread and listening to music they hadn't listened to in a long time, learning new hobbies, being on zoom with family. And we really treated each other like we were beloved beings. Right? Everyone was really appreciative of just being alive. And I wanted to lean into that with this poetry collection. Right? How do we honor being alive? How do we honor the idea that we are all beloved? Everyone who picks up this collection, everyone who reads the title, everyone who, like, as we're sitting here across from each other, this is the first time that you and I have done this, and hopefully it's not the last. And this is a beautiful moment we might not get again. So how do we just sit in this moment of you and I just even speaking?
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B
Do you feel like that sense of gratitude, of appreciation, is something has a new shade than it has in your past works? I'm thinking of, like, Patriarchy Blues. Has it evolved since then? Is it new?
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A
Yeah, I think that a lot of my work historically has been trying to fill the gaps that society is navigating, right? Patriarchy, transphobia, homophobia, things of that nature, you know, racism in schools, book bans, and things of that nature. And I'm really at this point right now at this collection where I just want to. Yes, I'm still unpacking those things, but I want to unpack why we even fight in the first place to change the world, right? We're fighting so that it's easier to just lay in Prospect park and look at the sky. We're fighting so that, you know, the food tastes better, and we're fighting so that, you know, the kids are safer, and we have to really honor that. And that's what I'm trying to honor in this collection.
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B
You know, in the new collection, the poem Notes From Therapy opens the book. Why did you choose to introduce We Alive, Beloved with this particular poem? How does it kind of set the tone?
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A
Yeah, so it's a running theme throughout the collection that I play with this idea of, like, jotting notes down from conversations with my therapist. And I wanted to open it with that because I think it's a really honest poem. It's talking about the things that harm us, that ail us, that traumatize us, to ultimately get us to this point where. But we can be and have so much more. And that's what the book is. The book attempts to remind us we can be and have so much more. What does it look like to say, okay, I Have a line in there. The world bruises us into retreat. Great. And when we wake up, and where we come out of that hiding place, there's flowers there.
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B
Yeah. That's beautiful. You mentioned a line from the poem. Would you be willing to read it for us?
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A
Right now? Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to.
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B
So this is Frederick Joseph from We Alive, Beloved. The poem is Notes from Therapy. Take it away.
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A
Notes from Therapy. This world bruises us into retreat. A half life crawling back to the womb, Away from false starts and things we have been. But in the house of becoming, there are no clocks, no chimes marking transformation, Only the whisper of possibility, an expanse vibrating in the palm of your hand. Choices shaped like rivers endlessly branching into waters begin in your life's timid daybreak or begin in the twilight of your years. Our lives are a gallery of unfinished portraits, each stroke a choice unrestrained, untamed by the leash of time, each breath, each moment a fresh parchment. Write, rewrite until the ink runs dry. Let it startle you. Become a sunburst in a winter sky. Laughter in a room of silent faces become raindrops tracing veins of a leaf. Or unexpected ballads in city noise.
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B
That line, become a sunburst in a winter sky is so beautiful and evocative.
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A
Thank you. Absolutely.
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B
You know, we're talking, listeners, right now to Frederick Joseph, the poet and author. His new collection of poems is called We Alive, Beloved. And today is publication day. I'd love to talk a little bit about poetry for you, just in general. When did you find poetry for yourself?
- [06:54]
A
You know, it's so funny. I actually found poetry thanks to my grandmother, because of hip hop, As a matter of fact, you know, I'm a kid of the 90s, and so, you know, I grew up on the Jay Z and the Common and the, you know, MC Light, so on and so forth. And I would be, you know, around the house, you know, rapping things myself. But also, like, a lot of kids in New York City, I had a rhyme book, right? Like a lot of kids around the country. And so my grandmother was just like, oh, you're writing poetry? I'm like, no, this. This is. This is rap. I'm gonna. I'm gonna be the next Nas. And she's like, but it's also poetry. And I'm like, huh. So she introduced me to, you know, Gwendolyn Brooks and introduced me to Langston Hughes and so on and so forth. I'm like, you know what? Maybe Langston Hughes isn't so different from Jay Z, right? And so I really Started into poetry and learning that poetry really is our first artistic language as humans. Right. And I don't think we honor that enough. You know, people have asked me, why a poetry collection now? And I'm like, well, because I feel like my career should have started with a poetry collection because that's where this all started for all of us. And I don't think we really talk about that. You know, even the prose of someone like James Baldwin or Toni Morrison, that's poetry. We couldn't get that without poetry. And that was our first, again, artistic language.
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B
Well, it's interesting for you too, because you have a varied portfolio of work. I mean, one of my favorite things about your work are the picture books that you've done. Actually you've written stories for Marvel's Spider man and Black Panther. You know, prose is poetry is kind of what you're saying here. And I'm wondering for younger people how you approach that, like, what makes your work accessible when you're writing for kids? What's that process like for you?
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A
Yeah, you know, I try not to downplay the brilliance of young people. Right. So it's funny, there's actually a young person with me today who. And soon he'll probably be sitting in the studio with you. His name is Kelly Bailey and he's this brilliant young Haitian born writer. He's 13 years old. And I think about Kelly and the genius of just talking to someone like him, like, okay, I actually just need to write and maybe push you towards learning certain things. But you're already there. I think that this generation especially is the most brilliant young people that we've ever seen, quite frankly. And so when I'm writing for young folks, if you would, I might tailor the language a bit differently, but I try to say the same things, if that makes any sense.
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B
Yeah, absolutely. What do you find yourself imparting or learning from younger people? The way it shows up in your own work, I think is more interesting there.
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A
I think the most important thing that I've learned from young people, especially over the last few years, is identity. Right. I think that there's a freedom in certain spaces to be right and this idea of constantly becoming. And that's one of my. That's one of the reasons I love writing for young people because I think that we had a rigidness in history around sexuality, a rigidness around, you know, interests, a rigidness around all sorts of, you know, things. And a lot of them are playing with what does it look like for there not to be a box? Yeah, right. No box to fit into, just a park to run around in and find yourself. And that's the thing I'm learning most from them.
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B
While we're talking about younger people, it strikes me that the COVID of your book is of children playing. Talk about that a little bit. Where'd this cover come from?
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A
Oh, God. You know, so one of my favorite, and I actually think that he was just here recently. One of my favorite albums is Undone by the Roots. And so for those who are not familiar with the Roots work, a lot of their albums feature black and white art. And so there's this one album, again, Undone, where there's a kid doing a backflip on a mattress, which is so quintessentially, you know, inner city America. Right. Like, the mattress tossed out. And, like, kids just turn it. And they turn it basically into Disney World. And so I was just like, what does it look like to frame the best time to be alive? Right. And it really is childhood. And I think what we're all aiming to do is sustain the moment on this cover. So for those who haven't seen it yet, there's, you know, a little boy blowing bubbles and three girls playing double Dutch. And I'm like, I want to be those children at 50, at 60, 75, 35, 40. And I want all of us to never lose that.
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B
Did you ever try to do a backflip on. Because I did many times more recently than I care to admit.
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A
So I. I have. I found out very quickly the lack of athleticism that I do have, which is why I'm a writer.
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B
So. Fair enough.
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A
Well, it's never too late to start. Yeah.
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B
Yeah. You have a few poems that reflect on what it means to be a child. One of them is As a Boy, I Watched Westerns.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Love to hear it before you dive into it. Which aspects or ideas of what it means to be a Figuring out the world did you want to capture here?
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A
You know, for me, that poem in particular ties back to my uncles. So I had three uncles. Two of them have since passed. And growing up, they were kind of in and out of my life. And sadly, I didn't have my father around. And when I was thinking about what connects me to them, I realized I was sitting in the house one day watching True Grit, and I just thought of my uncle's and, like, why do I. Like, why do I love Westerns? And, like, because that is the thing that reminds me of them. Kind of like these three desperados who would come rolling into town and, you know, they'd sit with me and put on these black and white, you know, movies and then head off and so similar. You know, obviously it's a metaphor, but it literally happened. And that's what I have from them. This, you know, these flicks about desperados coming in. And that's when I felt most loved on by them. And I wanted to capture those moments in this poem.
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So here it is.
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A
All right. As a boy, I watched westerns wading through the gravel of endless prairies alone, yearning for the taste of gunsmoke in my mouth. The far off glare of sunsets on the horizon held in my vision like the answer to every question I asked. Alone as I watched how they made my uncle's spark like Flintstones under the broad expanse of a Technicolor sky, leaving them in awe of the lonesome desert swaddled within the glass belly of a television leathered, skinned lone horseman strays finding themselves among the dust of life's hardship with no friends other than their faithful horse and their even more faithful rifle. This is all he needs when the world is settling on his broad shoulders like the slow birth of mountains. Randall, Butch, Mark, my three desperados coming and going, never resting or staying too long, these men of mine like tumbleweeds on a Sergio Leone canvas. They would laugh with the gruff voices like cowhide and smelled of saloons and a trail of broken hearts. I'd sit on the edge of my childhood legs too short to touch ground in slippers I pretended were weathered boots perched on a hardwood stool that some might have mistaken for a plastic covered couch, mesmerizing those rugged reels of fiction holding them between us like a lifeline. Believing the screen's amber glow I might find the language to bridge the gulfs that spread vast and silent between our generations. I needed to know their language, to have the desert on my tongue, to see the world through cigarette creased eyes, to find my place with them on the new frontier so I could be seen by someone who could teach me to be a man, too.
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B
Those last two lines. So I could be seen by someone who could teach me to be a man too. You're thinking about your uncles there.
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A
Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think that obviously I'm directly talking about my uncles, but I'm also talking about generations of men who are trying to figure out what a man is. Right? Is a man this stoic being, riding in on a horse, drinking too much, saying all the wrong things to women? Is that what a man is? Is that who I want to teach me. And is this navigation or do I want to learn what a man is from watching Reading Rainbow, or do I want to learn what a man is from watching Bob Ross? And so I'm playing, playing with this idea that this, like, hyper masculine figure is who I wanted to be so badly. And I juxtapose that with the rest of the book where I'm also talking about being a man and being tender. Right. And trying to almost sit with them in that space, but also unlearn the things that I watched them do.
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B
At the end of writing this and seeing it now and reading it back to us, has your conception of what it means to be a man changed at all?
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A
I think that long before writing that my conception of being a man had changed. But I think I had to honor what it was that I was taught at the time though. Right. Because I think oftentimes when we're talking about, you know, hyper toxic masculinity and things of that nature, we forget to also speak to the beautiful aspects of masculinity. Right. The beautiful aspects of manhood. So in that I learned from them, I loved them in those spaces. And I can also unlearn things while still loving them. Right. And so while it again, has changed, I also want to honor the fact that these men were alive and in my life at the time.
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B
Yeah. You know, I'm thinking about the vast number of poems in here. Are there poems in here that hold a special meaning for you at this moment in your life right now and why?
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A
Yeah, I think that there's a poem in the book called Hymn Tender. And I and I read Hymn Tender recently at an event for Brooklyn Poets in Brooklyn Heights, because in the room were all of my closest friends who happen to not all be men, but these are men who are trying to unpack and dismantle toxic masculinity. And so part of that, when we talk about toxic masculinity oftentimes is the ways in which it harms the people around, you know, people, you know, exuding toxic masculinity. But we don't talk about how toxic masculinity also harms the man himself. Right. And so it doesn't allow you to be tender. It doesn't allow you to be emotional. And so I love that poem because I'm talking about the idea that you and your best friend who's another man can just love on one another. Right. Like, what does it look like? That poem also reminds me of this moment with you. And I like, I actually love that I'm sitting here with you. Also love Alison. But you know, what does it look like that you and I can come into a room and smile at each other, right?
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B
As men. You're saying.
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A
Yes, as men. And smile at each other and say, I am smiling.
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B
Just. Yeah, no, we're both smiling.
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A
We're both smiling like we're, you know, I'm truly geeked out to have this conversation because I don't want us. I want us to be happy. It's hot outside. It's nyc. We're two men. We don't have to be. We don't have to sit here and be stoic and posturing. We can just have a good time with each other and really love on each other. Even just in the space.
- [18:45]
B
Yeah, it's a great point. I love being in this space with you. I have loved this conversation. Unfortunately, I'm looking at the time we got to wrap it up, so I will just say thank you. Frederick Joseph, the collection of poems We Alive, Beloved. Today is publication day. Congratulations and thanks again for this work and for hanging out with us and talking.
- [19:03]
A
Thank you so much.
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B
All right. There is more, all of it on the way. We are going to talk to Lily Gladstone, who won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar for her last film, Killers of the Flower Moon. Her new film, also set in Oklahoma, explores modern issues facing the indigenous community.
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A
Community.
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She and her co star, Isabel Deroy Olson will join us to discuss Fancy Dance. Stay tuned for that. It's going to be a great conversation and we will see you right after the news. Stay with us.
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A
This is Ira Flato, host of Science Friday. For over 30 years, the science Friday team has been reporting high quality science and technology news, making science fun for curious people by covering everything from the outer reaches of space to the rapidly changing world of AI to the tiniest microbes in our bodies. Audiences trust our show because they know we're driven by a mission to inform and serve listeners first and foremost with important news they won't get anywhere else. And our sponsors benefit from that halo effect. For more information on becoming a sponsor, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.