← Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone
Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning with Sasha Stone
A Good Friday Special: Interview with Poet Joseph Massey + Giveaway
01:09:36
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- [00:00]
Sasha Stone
Hi, everyone. Welcome to Free Thinking through the Fourth Turning. My name is Sasha Stone.
- [00:10]
Joseph Massey
America is the poem. Rain washes the dust from train windows as we barrel through the poem of America. From New York to Chicago, I watch it scroll by frame by frame and line by line. Rivers and lakes reflect the pale winter sky and haunt my vision. America, what you were and will be again. I see you in silos rising like fists from farmland. America. The land itself says fight America. I see you in chipped brick walls stained with faded logos. I see you there waiting to rise from gone under towns and cities spangled in endless dusk. We can see you now emerging from boarded up corner bars, baseball fields barbed with weeds hollowed out, churches and factories folded in on themselves like crushed cans reclaimed by the wild. And we see you and we know you in ragtag families packed into vehicles to head to church on a Sunday or to visit a grandfather who remembers war and what it means to survive for love of the country that survives because of him and his brothers gone. America, for love we go on. America. You defy the narratives imposed to poison your majesty. All the poison imposed to warp us away from our axis. The true, the beautiful. What binds us to a shared reality sealed under the hand of God. Americans, may we all wake to the dawn this day with courage. For we are the whirlwind promised by patriots who fought to the depth of a last breath to birth. America. And we are here. There is no other time to watch her rise again.
- [03:26]
Sasha Stone
I have a very special guest with us this week. It's Joseph Massey, the poet laureate of the inaugural Trump administration. Although it never quite came to pass, but that's sort of how we see him. Joseph Massey you've probably seen on the Megyn Kelly Show. He's been on there a couple of times. You might say she launched his career. Megan is incredibly empathetic and sympathetic to Joseph's situation. She's a big hearted woman. People don't really give her enough credit for that, but I see it in her. She cares a lot and she really cares about Joseph Massey and his story. And we'll get into that in a minute, but first I'd just like to introduce you to Joseph. Hello.
- [04:12]
Joseph Massey
Hi. Thanks, Sasha.
- [04:14]
Sasha Stone
We should mention that Joseph has a new book coming out called America is the Poem. And right now, after appearing on the Megyn Kelly show, it shot to the top, number one across all platforms in the poetry section all over the world, not just in America, but. And it is actually in the top 50 all book sales at Amazon right now out of millions of books, which is incredible. And we will be giving away five copies of his book. So congratulations, Joseph. That's amazing.
- [04:47]
Joseph Massey
Thank you. Yeah, it's gratifying, and it's overwhelming in a good way.
- [04:53]
Sasha Stone
You're so welcome. So I don't know how many people listening to this know your story, but I thought since it was Good Friday tomorrow, we might just quickly start about talking about how you came to be a man of faith. Now, I come from the left. I've been an atheist all my life. And maybe now you could say I've graduated to being an agnostic, which is a big step for me because I, you know, I've always been an atheist. But you're not. You're a devout, I would say. And so much of your work is intertwined with your faith. So I just wonder if you could talk a little bit about how you got to that point. And if you want to tell a little bit about your story, you can do that now, too, but we can talk a little bit more about that later as well.
- [05:38]
Joseph Massey
Yeah, I'd be happy to. But where to. Where to begin? Begin from the beginning. I wasn't raised in a religious household, but my grandmother, I don't. She's. She's passed away. She passed away a decade ago, so I can't ask her. But I've always wondered why she always had Catholic stuff, like, around the house, and, like, there were always palms hanging, you know, hanging from crucifixes on Palm Sunday and things like this. And she celebrated a lot of Catholic holidays, so the Catholic Church was kind of always in the background. And I was baptized Catholic, even though neither of my parents are Catholic. I don't know. It's kind of a mystery. And. But, yeah, growing up, not. Not religious, but always felt some kind of presence that was beyond the world and beyond myself. But. And that. That. That longing to know whatever that presence is took several different forms throughout my life. I was involved in a kind of guru situation. A group called Ananda. They. They study the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda. I did that for five years. Learned how to meditate and breathe. And it wasn't. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but. But it wasn't a terrible experience. It wasn't a cult. But I. When I was canceled in 2018, which happened very suddenly, a letter went up on a WordPress website written by an anonymous person claiming that I called her hot at a poetry reading. God forbid. Yeah, that was. That was. That was the main accusation. And so another Poet who I had been involved in. Involved with romantically. It was an affair. It ended badly. I ended it. Ended it by telling her husband. Probably wasn't the best idea, but she wouldn't leave me alone. You know, that's. That's a part that's always left out when other people have written about this situation where they make me out to be, you know, a villainous, creepy person. But this lady wouldn't leave, Wouldn't leave me alone. I. I gave her a very polite, no contact email and she just persisted. And so I told her husband and she had. She had a vendetta from that point on. And it became worse when I had a book published, a book accepted for publication by a press that she desperately wanted. She wanted them to publish her book. And jealousy is not in short supply in the poetry world, I think runs on jealousy. Much, much to its detriment. I mean, into anyway.
- [08:56]
Sasha Stone
But we should just say right here, because Joseph is too humble to say, like he was really big in the poetry world, like very well known, very important. He was the kind of guy, like, I know it seems weird to say all these years later, but believe it or not, there was such a thing as like a poetry groupie. Like, if you were in that scene and you knew about Joseph and you were a young female. I'm just being honest here. You would want to be in that aura. You would want him to notice you. It's in every industry. It's in film, it's in music, it's in any kind of thing where men and women sort of intermingle. Well, not just men and women, but, you know, in the gay community as well. But, you know, Joseph had high status. And the thing that was so shocking about that MeToo incident was that so many women started to like, pile on who, who were like women who fluttered around him, you know, during that era. But when he says he's canceled, what he means is they, they took a loaded gun and they just destroyed his career. Destroyed it. Not just his career, but his entire identity almost. And they took him out of books. He was unpersoned for nothing. For nothing. There was never any due process. He had no case. It was just, you're done. We're kicking you out because we can do it. We have the power. Anyway, continue.
- [10:30]
Joseph Massey
That's all true. And yeah, there were women orbiting. Orbiting around me, but they were orbiting from a distance. Because even though I was as successful as I was in that. In that mainstream poetry world and becoming more and more successful as each new book was published. I still rarely gave poetry readings. I didn't go to events or anything like that. I rarely ever did. And so a lot of the interactions that I had with people, many of those interactions just took place online, which I think has a lot to do with why, if anyone were to look up what I've been accused of, and there's. There's very little substance to it, and there's. There's never any, you know, screen grabs or screenshots of. Of me being bad online because I was having mutual, consensual conversations with people that rarely ever even went into territory that was, I don't know, not even R rated. But when that letter dropped on Facebook, when the. The woman who I was in an affair with, she dropped that, and it just spread so quickly, and it seemed like everybody I'd ever had anything to do with, even one person I didn't know at all personally. I. I guess I met her at a poetry reading. I barely remembered it. And she piled on with a comment that Joseph. I met Joseph Massey at a poetry reading. And he looked at me like I was a meal. So I was Dan, and I mean people. And she got comments saying, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry you. That. That's so. You must be so traumatized. And I don't even. I don't have no memory of meeting this person. And so many of the comments and accusations, if you can call them that, or on that level, but at that time, 2018, no matter what you say about the target, this man, it's, It's, It's. It's fine. It's fair game. Believe all women and the poetry world didn't have. They didn't have a scalp yet. And there's a lot of resentment, like we said earlier, like in the beginning of the conversation, jealousy is in no short supply in the poetry world. And so people were happy to have an effigy of a powerful literary man. But meanwhile, I didn't really have power. I was not a professor. I didn't run a poetry press. I never offered favors, literary favors to people, you know, like, there was no casting couch. There's no. Nothing to catch. I did. I was just a poet, but they painted me. And as this powerful person who used his privilege to, I don't know, have conversations on the Internet, I suppose, well.
- [13:56]
Sasha Stone
It helps them to elevate themselves. If we learned anything from Salem, it's that for one winter, these adolescent girls had the town in the palm of their hand, power they would never have had otherwise. And would never have again. And that is intoxicating. And I think that a lot of women felt like. Not just women, men. They felt like, you know, as long as I'm doing the accusing, as long as I'm on the other side, then my status will be elevated while you're, you know, you're disposable. And if I can throw you away, then that can boost. You certainly saw that in your cancellation. A lot of these people who accused you got their. Their status was elevated. Their. Their Personas were elevated.
- [14:37]
Joseph Massey
Well, they were elevated in the moment, but it never translated into any kind of success, you know, with their own work because they. They're not good writers. And I think that you see this a lot with someone who does have talent becomes a target. A lot of people with very little or no talent, who are very frustrated, who may have an MFA in creative writing, and they feel entitled to have their book published. It's cathartic for them, in a perverse way to tear somebody successful down. And, yeah, the main people who came for me, who. And most of them I did not know personally at all, they're not doing anything now. I mean, one of them collects rats and posts about rats. One. One of them became a death doula, which is. I'm like. Like, you almost drove me to suicide. I don't know. I hope you're not. I hope you're not doing that to your. Your clients on the. But that's terrible.
- [15:53]
Sasha Stone
Yeah, but it's a great story to me because it's so absurd. The whole thing is so absurd. And, you know, what was so weird was how all these, like, lofty institutions, you know, saw it. Saw it that they had to take you off their lists and unpublish you and not invite you to their, you know, their. Whatever they do in the poetry world. They have these gatherings, you know, of important people. And it was so dishonest because, as you say, it had nothing to do with your work. Your work is beautiful. Your poems are incredible, and anyone who reads them knows that. And, you know, I think personally that you came out on the other side in a better place, because anybody who stayed on that side, that means they had to go along with all this stuff. And that eats away at the soul. It's a deception.
- [16:48]
Joseph Massey
Yeah, well, from the beginning, I mean, the day that that letter dropped, you know, I knew my life was life as I knew it was over as soon as I got the call from someone I hadn't heard from in a long time. And she asked me, are you okay? I. I knew what was coming. And yeah, I. I knew life. Life is that life as I know it was finished and. But I was determined to not spiral out into rage, into drinking, into any number of behaviors I could have indulged in. I did post a couple apologies, but of course none of it, it never went anywhere. It's just more. Yeah, it was, it was raw meat to them. I mean, right. There is no such thing as. They, they would never accept an apology. They were actively working to drive me to either complete ruin financially and personally, or suicide. But I mean, what's the difference? I think they would have been happy to. For me to have offed myself. And so to get back to the faith thing, I, I was not going to off myself and the group. I had been involved in that, with all the meditation and the yoga and stuff, that just wasn't cutting it anymore because the intensity of losing everything was so much, you know, breathing exercises, it. It wasn't, it wasn't cutting the panic attacks, you know, it wasn't giving that thing. I was involved in this Hindu based. Whatever. It was just not fulfilling. It wasn't sustaining in a way that the heart, I think, needs, you know, the human heart needs. It was really just a bunch of exercises. And so I started hanging out around the Catholic church, sitting in the grotto where they have a statue of Our lady and just kind of receiving whatever peace I felt there at the time, which was considerable. And then I eventually went through the process of being catechized by the priests there and being confirmed, since I was already baptized Catholic as an infant. But the church gave me stability. And it also A part of it being given stability was that it put everything that was happening to me in a much in a context that. That made it less of a catastrophe and more of an opportunity to, to grow and to find the grace in it and also to forgive these people because living with horrible resentments and hatred is only going to damage you, eat at you. I didn't, I didn't want my heart to be iced over by with hate and I had to forgive them. That doesn't mean it's not turning the other cheek. You know, it's. I don't, I don't want anything to do with those people ever again. But I hold no contempt toward them. I don't wish them any ill will because they have enough of it already in their own lives, in their own heads.
- [20:08]
Sasha Stone
You know, what was your experience like from going from sitting on the bench to, to attending. Did you attend service? Did you attend church on Sundays or how did that work?
- [20:20]
Joseph Massey
Yeah, even before I was confirmed, I, I would go to mass and just kind of sit there. I wasn't too sure happening during the mass, but just, just, just to go and to be in the church. And just as often I would go and sit in the church in the middle of the day when no one was there and, and meditate, but in a different way, because that kind of Hindu style of meditation, you're, you're emptying yourself out, but in Christian meditation you're allowing yourself to be filled in with the light of the Lord, with the Holy Spirit, you know, so it's not an emptying, it's a, it's a filling up. And that was all so new to me and so, so sustaining at that time because I, there were, there were many periods where I didn't want to live. I was hospitalized for a week because I couldn't handle the panic attacks anymore and wanted to die. But, but, but I made it. I mean, by the grace of God, I made it. And as horrible as the cancellation was, the worst things ever happened to me. I mean, even though it's been years since it all went down initially, I still haven't really looked at all the pieces together because it's too hard. But it, I, I still though can say with certainty that it was also the best thing that happened to me. And I, and I mean that because we wouldn't be talking, I would never would have met Megan Kelly.
- [21:57]
Sasha Stone
So how did you learn that, that. This is a dumb question from somebody who knows nothing about religion, but how did you come to understand that, that it was about filling yourself up with the light? Did somebody teach that to you or was it just something you already knew?
- [22:11]
Joseph Massey
No, interestingly, no. And interestingly enough, it was just something I intuited or actually experienced when I was sitting in the grotto, just gazing at the statue of Our lady there and feeling the presence of God actually filling me up. I mean, because I was in an absolute, just the worst state of discombobulation, horrible depression and anxiety, and it's like I was being repaired, you know, as I sat and meditated. And I didn't even know how to pray, and yet I was being led through prayer because it's not that complicated. It's just about opening yourself up and making yourself available to God's presence. And you could do that in lots of ways. But I did. It just, it just happened. It just happened on its own. God. God taught me how to pray. Sitting there in the grotto. But then as I was being catechized at Our lady of the Valley in East Hampton, which is an amazing church and a beautiful church, the pastor there, Father Ryan Slieva, turned me on to various books by Catholic writers that were enlightening and, and teaching me more about prayer by the life of prayer and about the life of contemplation as a Catholic. And I, I haven't, I haven't looked back. I mean, there have been bumps like you used the word devout earlier. I don't, I don't feel like I'm devout enough ever, you know, but it's okay. No one can be, can be devout, can be totally devout. We are human. We are. We all sin, we all stumble. But it's not, it's not a setback when you stumble. That's something I've only learned recently. It's. It's just another opportunity to get up and move forward.
- [24:14]
Sasha Stone
I love that. I mean, it is the thing that we've been missing. We were missing on the left. I think I put two and two together finally and realized that all of this woke stuff came out of that need, that fundamental need for a deeper meaning, a deeper sense of purpose. But the problem with it is, as you lived through and as I've now lived through, because I lived through something similar, it wasn't anywhere near as bad as yours. But I know that feeling, believe me, is this idea of redemption and a path back and forgiveness that doesn't exist. Leave that to a 2000 year old religion. To have that be a religion that has staying power as opposed to one that is so rigid and puritanical and judgmental that they offer no redemption. You're out. And that's it. You're a bad person and you're not welcome back in our world, you know, so, yeah, it's.
- [25:06]
Joseph Massey
They, they have, they have all the hallmarks of a cult. I mean, it's almost a cliche at this point to call the woke thing a cult, but it really is and really does function as a cult. That glazed over look in their eyes, the way that you. I remember having a zoom conversation during the lockdown with a friend and I was just kind of starting to look at information about the vaccines and I think we were talking about, I said it was hard. I remember telling her it's horrible that these healthcare workers in particular are being fired because they don't want to take an experimental vaccine. And I was saying, you know, there is such a thing as like natural immunity. And as soon as I said the phrase natural immunity, no exaggeration. This friend of mine who I thought was a pretty sane, smart person, just put her hands over her ears like a child and was just going, like, glitch, glitching out over natural immunity, you know, I know.
- [26:18]
Sasha Stone
I remember this is. I mean, like, all of us sort of in 2020. I remember pulling away when I said to people, look, it makes no sense. This virus is microscopic. You're going to tell me that these, like, loose scarves wrapped around people's mouths are, like, doing anything, and we're all supposed to pretend like that's protection against. You know, and then everybody was like, you have to. And it was so verboten to even say that much, to even question the masks. And I think that, like, I just had a conversation with my mom. I think I mentioned this on Twitter, but. And I said, you know, I was telling her about this dog abuse incident that I witnessed that was really upsetting. And I told her, I said, I'm so glad that the. That the beagle testing is finally over. And she said, oh, so am I. And I said, yeah, you can thank the Trump administration for that. And she's like, no, no. And I said, yeah, because it was under Dr. Fauci that, that those expense. No, no, no, I'm hanging up. Goodbye. Click. Yeah, so, you know, that is weird. And I don't know where it comes from. That kind of, like, I wouldn't. And even though I wouldn't want to hear them talk, I wouldn't do that, you know.
- [27:31]
Joseph Massey
Oh, that's the cult thing. I love reading about cults. And you don't. You don't want to, like, threaten to burst that. That bubble they live in. If you get anywhere near it with a truth pin, they completely bug out and, you know. Yeah, they hang up or they cover their ears. And I don't. I've never experienced that with anybody on the right. I've seen some spirited debates and whatever, but that. That the way the left has, or a large faction of it, has of completely dehumanizing someone to the point where they are absolutely willing to drive them to suicide. And now we see how far we've gone down the slippery slope with them celebrating actual murderers.
- [28:18]
Sasha Stone
Actual murderers. And it seems to be just getting worse. The violence is escalating in there, you know?
- [28:25]
Joseph Massey
Yeah.
- [28:26]
Sasha Stone
So. All right, so the. Let's talk about your poetry now. So what was the inspiration for this book? Did it because Joseph and I collaborated on his. His poem. America is the poem. I did the video. He did the voiceover. He asked me to do it, I did it. It was going to be used. We wanted it to play at the inauguration of Trump, but that didn't happen. I don't even know who they picked instead, but it was, I think it was very, very good, but I don't remember it. Anyway, so that didn't happen. But was that the inspiration for the book or did you already have the book ready to go?
- [29:01]
Joseph Massey
Well, just to say, they did not have an inaugural poet at all, and no Republican president has ever had an inaugural poet, which was something I thought would help my chances. But I heard through the grapevine that they didn't want to seem like they were doing what Biden did, like, because he had Amanda Gorman.
- [29:25]
Sasha Stone
Right.
- [29:25]
Joseph Massey
And. Yeah, but what it, what inspired the book was. Well, really, it's just I, I realized I had a collection of work that spanned a whole year, so all the Four Seasons are in there. I like the way that, that held together. And I really liked the. I, I really like the title, America is the Poem. And when I thought about making that the title of the book as well, it just, that was it. That sealed the deal for me. I mean, speaking of jealousy in the poetry world and whatever kind of helped me decide to do the book and title it America is the poem was a hour long podcast between two very unhappy, very unsuccessful poets who were making fun of my inauguration poem for an hour. And it was, it was interesting. I probably shouldn't have watched the whole thing, but they, they didn't really have anything specifically to say about the poem itself and the level of writing or the craft of it. So it was just all this knee jerk and they, and as I mentioned on Megan's show the other day that they called me the, the poet laureate of white people, which I found really funny. But as they were like, they read the poem out loud and they were talking about it like I could like the, like even like the muscles in their, their face with. It was like they were twitching, like they were so, like they didn't, they didn't know how to really approach it. They thought, I think they thought they would just be able to mock it and just get a lot of jokes out about it over the course of an hour. But as they read the poem, I think they, they could feel the power of the poem and I think they hated it. They hated themselves for feeling that that was my read on it. I, their, the way their facial expressions changed. So I was thinking that, that, that, that's a powerful title. That's A provocative title. I'm just going to call the whole book that. And I had a perfect picture for it that I took on 4th of July here, where I live in upstate New York, of an American flag reflected in a storefront window. I liked that. The American flag being reflected, the reflections kind of like looking backward. The flag itself is, you know, flying forward. And it felt like that's where the country, that's where the country's going. And the poem itself started writing it before Trump won. I was kind of writing it in my head and taking notes, but once he, once he won the election, that's when I really, I started working on it in earnest and had some contacts close with the Trump administration or the, or the Trump team at the time. So I know the idea went pretty far up and I always knew it was a long shot. My goal, number one was to just write a good poem and I think I did that.
- [32:37]
Sasha Stone
Yeah, no, I wish they had. I know that that poetry is not exactly the Trump brand, but he could sell it, you know, he can sell anything. But you know what I didn't do when I made that video was use your photos. And it didn't even occur to me until just now that that would have been something we could have done because Joseph Massey is an incredible photographer. Like, if I've said this before, but if he wasn't known for his poetry, he'd be known for his photos. So do your photos make it into the book or is it mainly just the COVID shot?
- [33:08]
Joseph Massey
It's just the COVID shot. My initial idea for, for the new book was to have a combination of pictures and poems and it just wasn't feasible to, to have a, like a coffee table style book published. Yeah, because I would, it would have to be good quality. I could have published it through Amazon, but the images would not have looked as good as they should. So that's something I'm going to have to hold off on doing.
- [33:41]
Sasha Stone
Yeah, that would have been prohibitively expensive to produce something like that. So you know that.
- [33:47]
Joseph Massey
Yeah.
- [33:49]
Sasha Stone
So that would make the books themselves more expensive. And. But the photos you can find on his Instagram, he publishes them and they're beautiful. They're. They always take my breath away. I just can't believe the eye you have for composition. Were you, were you always a photographer or is it just a new thing now that you have the smartphone?
- [34:09]
Joseph Massey
It's, it's just, it's solely smartphone related. I mean, I, I've always loved visual art and I've studied it and I love It. I love reading about it. But, yeah, I. I didn't have a smartphone until later in life. I mean, I think it was like 2014 or 15 when I finally got a smartphone with a camera on it. But I just enjoy framing things and finding interesting compositions. I don't really consider myself a photographer because there are photographers who know how to use an actual camera and, like, develop their film and they know all the technical stuff. But I guess I'm just a. I don't know, I take. I'm a snapshot or I don't know what. What. Another term.
- [35:01]
Sasha Stone
I'll say something really pretentious, so forgive me in advance, but you're like, you're. You're a. Your. Your photos are like poems. They speak from your heart. They speak to you the same way your poetry does. You know, I don't know if that's just because I know you and I, you know, or if it really is that these photos just say so much, but they do. They say, stuff your photos to me. They speak to you. And those are the kind of photos I like the most. Like, anybody can take a beautiful shot of a mountain or a, you know, the half dome of Yosemite or whatever, of a beautiful woman or whatever, but it's hard to take a photo where the photo itself speaks to you. It has its own sort of message it's conveying. And I'll post some of his photos in the content part of this podcast so that if you want to go on my site, sashastone.subsack.com, you can see them or you can go on his Instagram. What's your Instagram?
- [35:59]
Joseph Massey
That would be J. Massey Poet. It's the same username as my X account.
- [36:05]
Sasha Stone
Oh, okay. Yeah. That makes it easy. That makes it easy. So what's your life like now? I know you talk about this on the Megyn Kelly Show. She asked you about this. But you moved recently, right? You moved from Massachusetts, was it?
- [36:19]
Joseph Massey
Yeah, I was living in substandard conditions and an underground apartment. I mean, right next to like a boiler room. Like a Fred Freddy Krueger style dwelling place. It was really. Yeah. And then I moved into a nicer apartment in the same town, but it turned out, no exaggeration, the neighbor above me, the neighbor below me, the neighbors across the hall, they were all drug dealers and not very good at what they do because they were always getting caught. And they were police. Police were out all the time. Police. So the final straw was like, when the police dogs were out, flashlights are being Pointed in my own apartment and the landlords refused to do anything or said they couldn't do anything. I. I have some ideas about that, but whatever. I. A very, very dear, very, very dear friend who lives near. I live near Saratoga Springs. She lives close by, and she helped me find this place so much bigger. I've never lived in an apartment this large. I have three bedrooms.
- [37:25]
Sasha Stone
Wow.
- [37:26]
Joseph Massey
And tons of light. And my neighbors are not bizarre drug addicts.
- [37:36]
Sasha Stone
What do you do with all those bedrooms? Do you have, like, an office and stuff? Do you use it that way?
- [37:40]
Joseph Massey
I have a study slash library. Then the bedroom, and then the third room is quite, quite small. And that is a. A room for prayer and meditation.
- [37:51]
Sasha Stone
Oh, nice. Wow.
- [37:53]
Joseph Massey
Yeah. Yeah. I'm very lucky.
- [37:56]
Sasha Stone
You. Well, I mean, you, You. You are lucky. Yes, blessed and lucky. But you're also talented, and that has brought you far. I don't think that Megan Kelly would be, you know, elevating and amplifying you just because you were canceled. She does it because she loves your poems, as you've heard her say and read. She's read your poems, and they touch her heart. And I think that is the power of your words. They're beautiful, and you're really good at it. I try. You know, I once wrote a screenplay about a bunch of poets that drive across the country. And so I had some experience trying to write poetry, trying to pretend to write poetry. And it's not easy. It's not easy to choose the right words. You know, people think, oh, anybody can write. But it's really not true. To be a really good poet, you have to have talent, discipline, and intelligence and wisdom. Those things you have.
- [38:51]
Joseph Massey
Well, not if you're in an MFA creative writing program. I think it's a prerequisite that you have no talent. And when you. And when you graduate three years later, whatever you. You have, you're even worse than you were when you started.
- [39:05]
Sasha Stone
No, bad poetry is the best. There's a great scene in Woody Allen's film Sleeper where Sleeper is a dystopian, sort of 1984ish look at the future Woody Allen. He wakes up 100 years after they put him to sleep, and he's woke up into the future. And he meets Diane Keaton. And Diane Keaton lives inside. It's just like our world today. She lives inside this bubble, and she's completely disconnected from the rest of the world. And she's just in this happy little bubble, and she thinks she's a poet. I don't know if you've ever seen it.
- [39:40]
Joseph Massey
But no, no, no.
- [39:41]
Sasha Stone
She thinks she's a poet. And she. One of the funny scenes is she. She recites a poem, and it's so bad, so embarrassingly bad. She. She actually says, like, the butterfly turns into the caterpillar. And the guy has to correct her and says, that's a really good poem. But the butterfly. The caterpillar turns into the butterfly. And she has a total nervous breakdown over it, you know, because she got it wrong. Harold, I wrote a. You didn't. Yes, I did. A little boy caught a butterfly and said to himself, I must try to understand my life and help others. Not just mothers and fathers, but friends, strangers too. With eyes of blue and lips full red and round but the butterfly didn't make a sound for he had turned into a caterpillar by and by. It's deep.
- [40:51]
Joseph Massey
You're so obviously influenced by McCune. Do you really like it?
- [40:56]
Sasha Stone
Only one thing. They change from caterpillars into butterflies. Not the other way. They do. They do. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. I always get that wrong. Like, get him out. Relax, relax. No, not the. Holding me spoiled and I'm getting a headache anyway. Shoot. I hate to be wrong.
- [41:21]
Joseph Massey
Luna.
- [41:22]
Sasha Stone
No, no, no. Sit down, sit down, Luna, sit down.
- [41:24]
Joseph Massey
Sit down. Come on, sit down.
- [41:26]
Sasha Stone
It'll be all right, I promise, but just relax. I was having so much fun.
- [41:32]
Joseph Massey
Come on. That's better.
- [41:35]
Sasha Stone
But it just. It was such. It's such a great way to describe how suffocating in that kind of environment, that MFA that you're talking about, that collegiate sort of woke. Suffocating cannot produce great work. It can't produce great movies or great comedy or anything. It's just because they don't have access to everything that's alive and thriving outside their bubble. You know?
- [42:02]
Joseph Massey
That's right. Yeah. And as far as the creative writing MFA industrial complex goes, the professors, many of them who know better, who know what they could say to these young poets to help them be better poets, they won't. They're scared of the students. They don't want to be. I know. I know enough professors in. Who teach creative writing to. To know this because I've heard. I've heard so many horror stories of a professor using the wrong pronouns and being dragged into wherever to talk to the director of the program. And. And so much of the poetry that's being pumped out today is. Well, it's political and it's totally identity based. And it's like my lived experience kind of poetry. And if you critique that, you're critiquing that person, you're critiquing their identity. And I think professors and other students are terrified to do that. And so the poets don't learn anything in these MFA programs and they get pumped out thinking that they're a master of the fine art of poetry. And it's created quite, quite a horrible situation because contemporary poetry, contemporary American poetry is just a, a dead space. It's a, it's just a wasteland of zombie political poetry that's not effective and there's no art to it. And. Yeah, and so in a way, like the cancellation, like I said, it's a gift. Another part of the gift was being forcibly exiled from a, from a so called community that was just going downhill artistically anyway. You know, the more the politics became crazier, that like BLM started and then all the white poets I know were posting the black box on social media, like bending over backwards to like prove that they, they're a good white person. And it was so transparently bogus and phony. And then the editors of journals were, you know, they had to diversify everything and then that just didn't, didn't improve the quality of the work that they were put. It's, it's a real mess and it just has gotten worse and worse and worse. And so I, I'm so relieved to be so far away from that world and to be doing it myself, my. On my own and to be thriving like this. It's. Yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing. I just feel so grateful.
- [44:49]
Sasha Stone
Yeah. I'm so excited for you. And I, I do encourage you to do something like a night, you know, a Friday night reading series. I mean, you probably don't want to do it, but I think it would be great to hear you. I would get your stuff on YouTube even as like an ASMR kind of poetry reading channel of just you reading poems or maybe some video of like a, you know, some water in a creek or whatever. Like our America is a poem that we did, but. And not so meticulously, but something along those lines, like as an ASMR channel. Man, I would totally subscribe to that. I know, it would be huge. People would, would eat it up and they wouldn't know who you are on YouTube. Anyway, let's, let's talk, darling. We'll talk.
- [45:41]
Joseph Massey
That's a brilliant marketing move. Like, I never thought of combining poetry with asmr, but yeah, people love asmr.
- [45:50]
Sasha Stone
So I do, I consume it so much. And so I'm always thinking about. But more than that, I think you have three things going for you, if I may. I totally sound like a. Like a coked up talent agent at a party, but go for it, go.
- [46:06]
Joseph Massey
For it, go for it. I need. I need help. I need all the help I can get.
- [46:11]
Sasha Stone
You have three main talents going for you that would be suited for the medium, which is your voice. You've got a great voice, you've got the content, amazing content, and you've got a visual eye. And you can put those three things together to create videos that will bring you thousands and thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people coming to read your. To listen to the call.
- [46:35]
Joseph Massey
We'll talk about that. Because I don't.
- [46:37]
Sasha Stone
Let's talk about it, darling.
- [46:39]
Joseph Massey
Yeah, well, you're. Well just to say to listen to anyone listening, please watch the video Sasha made of me reading my poem. America is the poem because she did a totally brilliant job. I think you did it like overnight.
- [46:51]
Sasha Stone
I pretty much did it overnight, but it was. Yeah, it was. I'll post it. I'll post it in the. I still have a copy of it. I don't think I have it on YouTube. I think it was only on your site and my site. Maybe I have it on YouTube. I don't know.
- [47:04]
Joseph Massey
You did an amazing, amazing job. Yeah, amazing.
- [47:06]
Sasha Stone
Oh, thank you. I was so. I was so proud of it. But also I felt that's why I'm sort of urging you to do this. Because for me, like, just listening to the poem was uplifting for me when I needed to be uplifted, not like, oh, I'm so happy, but spiritually fulfilling and made me. It reminded me of what it is that we've all been fighting for. You know, this. What we have on our side is we are at. We love our country and our aspiration is in that direction. We are patriots. We love our country. And we want, you know, we want America to be alive and to survive, not to be ruled by people who, you know, want to tear it down to the studs and rebuild it as something different. And a lot of people will read that as like I imagine those dumb poetry people. I didn't watch that video of them talking about you. I'm sort of attempted to do it now, but. But I imagine they talked a lot about race, right?
- [48:11]
Joseph Massey
No. Yeah. They said my poem, they said it wasn't diverse enough. But how do you. How do you know? How do you know. You don't know what I was looking at, like A lot of the imagery is when I was on a train going to Chicago. How do you know there weren't people of color? And I, like. I don't know. It's.
- [48:28]
Sasha Stone
But, well, I put people of color in the video, so they, you know, if they saw the video. But also. I know what they mean. I know exactly what they mean, because that's what Wokeism is. I was. I was a Woke blogger for many years. I was before it was even called that. So I know that when you're writing, you're always supposed to orient your position from the place of race and gender, and everything has to be reinterpreted that way. So you can't just talk about a movie or history or patriotism or the flag or anything without this other stuff that they've applied to it. I'm not saying that they had. They should have just, you know, shut up and sit down and never try to fight for their rights and that there was an oppression and all that. We all know that there was. But that's not what Wokeism is. It's not trying to clean up our perceptions and make us all on an equal level. It's more like we're changing the hierarchy. So someone like Joseph Massey doesn't matter anymore. His poems don't matter anymore because he's a white male, for one thing, you know, and this stupid cancellation happened. But they think that it's okay now to judge people on their skin color and their gender because they've decided that it's okay. You know, and in the other direction, it's racism. It's actual racism.
- [49:47]
Joseph Massey
Oh, it is. I mean it, like, definitionally, like, yes, it's racism. But don't tell them that.
- [49:56]
Sasha Stone
Don't tell them that. Right. So how's your. How's your life these days out there in New York? Are you. You know, are you happy? You fulfilled? I know that both of us are sort of living our life. Living our lives like monks or whatever.
- [50:10]
Joseph Massey
Yeah.
- [50:11]
Sasha Stone
And we have for years. Both of us have just, like, you know, permanently deathly single forever.
- [50:18]
Joseph Massey
Yes.
- [50:19]
Sasha Stone
But.
- [50:20]
Joseph Massey
Well, I'm. I'm resigned at this point to just. To just stay single. That's it. I'm done.
- [50:25]
Sasha Stone
Listen, I. I know I. I catch that vibe from you, but I want to encourage you that you should continue to look. Men and women are different in that way. Women, when it's done, it's done. But men. It's not true. Men have. Men can, you know, stay sort of virile and alive for years, and you still have a Lot left. I would encourage you to keep thinking about it, keep your heart open to it and not totally close your doors to finding somebody and maybe getting married, having a kid. All that can still be in your future. Not in mine, but in yours.
- [51:01]
Joseph Massey
It can be. It's. It's highly unlikely. But if I'm out having coffee and Elvira, mistress of the dark, walks up to me and gives me her number, I'll take it. I probably will text her, but that's not going to happen.
- [51:18]
Sasha Stone
Well, I. My advice to you would have been to move to a red state, but I think you're kind of in a red state area. Isn't up upstate New York red stat? Ish.
- [51:26]
Joseph Massey
I think they call it purple. It's like half. Half and half. I mean, from my window, I. There's a trans flag flying off. Off someone's house. But then on the, on the other side, on my side of the street, there's still a trump sign. You go a little bit further up, there's even. There's a. There's. There's some more Trumps. So it's really, it's really mixed. But yeah, I, I was living in a college town called East Hampton, which is in the five college area, as it's known where Smith Colleges there, which is completely off the wall.
- [51:58]
Sasha Stone
Oh boy.
- [51:59]
Joseph Massey
What are the other ones? I don't know. Hampshire, UMass Amherst. They're just. It's. It was crazy. It was. It was like living in a. In a psych ward. And that's grim. That is. It was. And it was just getting worse and worse. And so up here, even though obviously people have different, different, different political opinions, which is great. We do live in America. I don't. I've not noticed any kind of aggression or that kind of weirdness at all. People are. People seem genuinely kind up here. This is a roar. I'm near Saratoga Springs, but this part is more rural and definitely more working class. Saratoga Springs. The city is. There's a. It's very liberal. But I've been to that city enough to know that they're not, they're not shoving it down anyone's throat. You know, I don't. They're just some rich liberal people who walk their poodles. And I'm not offended by that.
- [53:00]
Sasha Stone
No, you're really lucky. I live in a hideously. My town is. It's 96% white and probably 99% liberal. And it is kind of scary to live here, honestly. People are very as you would expect them to be. They're not quite Smith college level deranged, but they are, but they're, you know, not far off. They're the older kind, you know, the boomer type. Yeah, but, but it is not that fun living around people like this. I, I, it's so funny. I never would have thought in all my years growing up that the fun side would turn out to be, turn out to be the right. Like that would be the fun side. That would be the let your hair down, you know, go on a boat and, and you know, dance around like to music like I just never would have con considered it would be the conservatives who would be the freer of the two sides, you know?
- [53:55]
Joseph Massey
Yeah, I never, I never would have imagined it either. I mean the polls, north and south pole have just totally flipped. You know, it's just the ax, the axis flipped. It's, it's, it's an interesting thing. I mean, I'm old enough to remember when all my poetry friends when I was in my 20s, they were so against censorship and they really, really like to talk about censorship. They weren't, they were all about free speech and whatever. And some of these same people participated in canceling me and in canceling others. It's a strange thing. Yeah, it's very weird. No, it's just I, I, I, I can't help but still feel a little bit of whiplash from how things have so drastically flipped.
- [54:47]
Sasha Stone
I know. I mean, I don't, I envy you that you have God. I envy you that you have religion. I, I wish that I had a way to get there because I have some pretty dark nights of the soul. I won't lie about that. But what gets me, what haunts me so much isn't the businesses that have decided, like for instance, for me what happened was they took away my ticket to the Oscars every year. They took away my ability to write a freelance report for Women's Media center, which I'd done for 10 years, all because of that article. Like I didn't do anything else. It just, but what really hurt the most, I think was like a really good friend of mine that I had known very well for like 15 years, just abruptly ending, ending the friendship over that. Did you have anything like that where, like somebody that you really trusted, that you really knew and thought you knew you could just end your relationship?
- [55:43]
Joseph Massey
More than I could count right now. I mean, I had, I mean, maybe at least a dozen, like close poetry friend, like people I knew, I've knew since I was in my 20s, early 20s, even as a Teen as a teenager. And, yeah, some of them just. Just ghosted completely, no explanation. Some made one person just, like, kind of made a story up to be irate about regarding me and use that as the excuse to say, I need a break from you. Well, the break has been going on for seven years now. I, I don't think that break is. And. And it can stay that way, but.
- [56:26]
Sasha Stone
That'S how I feel. I. I don't even think. I keep waiting for the day when I get a letter from him to say, you know, I'm so sorry about that. It was so silly of me. I don't think it's going to ever happen. But if it did, I've been. I know that if. If I was like Christian and I was good in my heart, I would just be forgiving and nice about it. Like, that would be the better thing to do.
- [56:46]
Joseph Massey
Well, you don't have to be nice. You don't have to be nice. It's just. But you don't have to give it much energy because I. I've received messages like that from people who are sort of apologizing, people who've left and then they come back and, yeah, I. I'm. I'm gracious enough to say thank you or whatever, but then I just block them or tell them explicitly. Just don't. I wish, you know, yeah, ill will. But don't, because they're only doing it to make themselves feel better. They're doing to. To assuage their guilt.
- [57:18]
Sasha Stone
Right. They know it's wrong. They know it's wrong.
- [57:21]
Joseph Massey
Yeah.
- [57:21]
Sasha Stone
My friend knew it was wrong, and he did exactly the same thing you're talking about. He dredged up some grievance from the past that he had never talked about before and just used that as an excuse. But I called him out on it and I said, that's. That's not why you know it. And he said, yeah. And then he finally admitted it. No, it was. It was definitely just because of Trump. But someday I think that. That maybe it'll occur to him, maybe it won't. But it was the one that I think stays with me just because it was so. It's still so shocking to me. And you're telling me that these people did this to you more than a dozen. Like, that just shocks me. I would never do that to somebody. Never. I don't have it in me to do that, no matter what they did, you know?
- [58:05]
Joseph Massey
Yeah. Yeah. And it's one of the most horrific things that you can do to someone to. Is to socially ostracize them. That's what drives canceled people to one of the main drivers. For them to want to kill themselves, to have your social world removed, it's. It's. It's horrible. And if I didn't have a spiritual life, I, I don't know. I probably. Who knows what I would have done? I don't think I'd be here. I don't think I'd be alive. But. Yeah, but that's the. Another gift of cancellation. You re. You do figure out or not. You don't figure it out. You find out who your friends are and who they aren't. You find out you have very few.
- [58:57]
Sasha Stone
You have. Find out you have very few. And the ones who. In my case, I don't know if this is your case, but in my case, the ones who still are my friends, there's a canyon between us, between what we can talk about and what we can't. Like, we really have to stay off certain subjects because it's so deeply embedded in our lives. All this stuff, especially on the left, you know, their whole worldview revolves around hatred of Trump, fighting that MAGA side, you know, and if, if somebody that they love is now part of it, how do they do that? You know? And so they try because they know that it's immoral to do anything else. They know deep down that they can't be one of those people. But at the same time, they think, I have nothing to say to her. What can I say to her? You know?
- [59:47]
Joseph Massey
Yeah, I, I have a couple. I have a couple of relationships like that, friendships. And. Yeah, we don't talk as much anymore. You know, it's like, because it's so glaring, you know, that the gulf, as you put it, it's, It's. How do you. How do you maintain a friendship when there's a gulf between you? You just can't bring certain things up or they're going to glitch out. And it's always a glitch. There's one poet in particular who stay. Oops. Remained my friend through everything. And she's a great person, but she absolutely has a bad case of tds. And the day of the election, when I posted a picture of myself wearing a Trump T shirt, she was apoplectic. I mean, she was beside herself, like, texting me, I can't believe you would do this. I thought, I assumed she already knew that what my politics were or how they changed, you know, But I guess not. She was really bent out of shape about it, and there was nothing I could say to. And really there wasn't anything I wanted to say. I don't have to. I didn't have to explain myself. You know, she was interrogating me about it and. Yeah, so. But we do still talk occasionally, but it's not the same, and it's very sad.
- [61:10]
Sasha Stone
That's right. And so when I go on, like, I know I don't know if you use Facebook, but Facebook was so much a part of my life as a Democrat that I can't use it anymore. I go back on there and I'm just like, I don't. I don't even relate to anything that's happening on this. But their, their sea of emotion is so strong that you can't post things. I mean, they, they force people in the maga side to be combative and to fight them and to mock them because they don't allow them any other way in. They don't treat them like human beings. They, you know, like, if you want to post something, they will scream at you and throw fits and so, you know, to chase you away. So it's not even worth it unless you take that other side and you just do it to troll them or to make them upset, you know, and, and that's so tempting, right? Yeah.
- [61:59]
Joseph Massey
For them to treat a Trump supporter or someone they think is far right fascist. Whatever, Whatever language they use, for them to treat someone like that, they feel that far opposite of them ethically, in every other way, treat them with dignity, then that humanizes that person. And they can't. They can't humanize the other. They can't humanize the Trump supporter because then it complete totally complicates their stupid rage that they can't even articulate. It would force them to have to really articulate why they have this hatred, and they're not willing to do that. And they have to see you as a monstrous figure, as less than human. Which explains I'm making quite a leap, but it's not really a leap at all. Explains why they're. They will gleefully celebrate murderers, right? Because they don't consider a CEO of a, of an insurance company or whatever to be a human being. And it's so bad that they don't even consider a young white male to be much of a human being. That guy's turning into the. I don't. And I don't want to say his name anyway, but the guy stabbed the. The white guy through the heart. They're turning him into the black Luigi.
- [63:28]
Sasha Stone
Right.
- [63:28]
Joseph Massey
And it's very strange.
- [63:30]
Sasha Stone
And the Abrigo or Kilmar Abrigo Garcia is now like George Floyd. It's like these are their. Their heroes. They have to be, because to them, they're people of color, are their religious symbols, and trans people are their religious symbols. So they can't see the crime. They can't see the sex offenders hiding behind the. In the transgender outfit so that they could go molest girls, which they do. They can't see the criminal who crosses the border and then murders somebody. Right. Because they're treated like. And the same with the stabbing. They need the other story to be true because that's their entire sense of purpose, their worldview. And this is unfortunate because it's destroyed culture because it is a disconnect from reality. They don't see people as who we really are. All right, so now we've got to get to your poetry. I was hoping that you could read some of it for us if you. If you feel like it.
- [64:30]
Joseph Massey
So I'll just read one poem.
- [64:32]
Sasha Stone
Okay.
- [64:35]
Joseph Massey
And this is the. The first poem in the book. America is the poem. And it relates back to what we were saying when I would sit in the grotto and. And sort of to. Sort of to kind of find my way into the. Into the Catholic Church, into that faith. And it's titled the Relief. After a week spent beneath swells of panic, I give my mind permission to lapse into lilacs. June wind unfurling the scent, Every sense caught up in a rush of memory, straining to align with present time as I sit on a bench by a small grotto where our lady gazes. Her lids open and close as shadows wave across her face and memory stops squirming to be seen and to see through her sight that sees the one who sees all all at once. The relief to be unbound by words, weightless in prayer, the heart broken open, if only for the length of a breath.
- [65:56]
Sasha Stone
God, that's so beautiful. We can't have one more?
- [66:00]
Joseph Massey
One more.
- [66:01]
Sasha Stone
One more, please. Encore.
- [66:04]
Joseph Massey
Encore.
- [66:06]
Sasha Stone
Read a longer one.
- [66:10]
Joseph Massey
A longer one. Yeah, that was pretty long for me.
- [66:13]
Sasha Stone
Yeah, it was so beautiful. Oh, so beautiful.
- [66:17]
Joseph Massey
All right. Ember Tide. On a walk, I think about death until the thought exhausts itself. Back to the breath cycling through this body, A fumbled prayer vibrating my chest. On a walk, I notice how snowbanks contract into winter's grit. Strewn over asphalt, paper saturated into pulp, plastic crushed into dim glitter glinting in gravel. Marion Blue full mast sky beams behind a neural network of bare branches. I stop walking and look up untangling the knots in mind until dizziness overcomes me and I drop my gaze to gather my balance Sight fixed on a point where the horizon vanishes and the unseen returns my gaze.
- [67:34]
Sasha Stone
Wow. Wow. It's so good. It's so good. And I. You guys buy that book, America is the Poem on Amazon. I'll put a link to it on the. On the. I guess I'll say show notes. It sounds so pretentious. But the show notes and a link to his page, which used to be called Dispatches from the Basement, but is now called Poetry Dispatches on substack. And there you can become a paid subscriber, which helps him buy groceries and pay the rent and support the arts. It's almost a charitable donation, if you think about it. And I'll have the America is the Poem video there, as well as Joseph will pick out commenters to give the copies away and we'll.
- [68:24]
Joseph Massey
Oh, I get to pick.
- [68:25]
Sasha Stone
You get to pick. You get to pick. I thought the first five, but I think it's better if you pick them and just give me the names and I will write to them privately and get their address.
- [68:34]
Joseph Massey
Okay.
- [68:36]
Sasha Stone
And we'll send them the book. And it's been so nice talking with you.
- [68:41]
Joseph Massey
It's been great. Yeah. We've known each other a long time, but we've never actually talked, so it's.
- [68:46]
Sasha Stone
Have we never talked before? Is this really the.
- [68:48]
Joseph Massey
No, it's the first time.
- [68:51]
Sasha Stone
I know we wanted to many times before, but finally, after both of our lives have been wrecked, what better time? And reborn.
- [69:03]
Joseph Massey
That's right.
- [69:05]
Sasha Stone
All right, well, hopefully maybe we'll do it again. Who knows?
- [69:09]
Joseph Massey
All right.
- [69:09]
Sasha Stone
All right. Have a good night and thanks again.
- [69:12]
Joseph Massey
You too. Thank you, Sasha.
- [69:14]
Sasha Stone
Alrighty.