Kate Baer, HOW ABOUT NOW: Poems

Summary

Totally Booked with Zibby

Guest: Kate Baer (“How About Now: Poems”)

Date: November 14, 2025
Host: Zibby Owens

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Episode Overview

In this candid and moving episode, Zibby Owens sits down with bestselling poet Kate Baer to discuss Kate’s new poetry collection, How About Now. The conversation ranges from the deeply personal inspirations behind the poems to reflections on body image, motherhood, mortality, marriage, and the evolving role of poetry in the digital age. Honest, humorous, and at times raw, this discussion immerses listeners in the experience and craft of a modern poet navigating life’s complexities.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Genesis of How About Now

• Personal and Universal: Kate describes her fourth poetry collection as her most personal, shaped by major health scares, motherhood, and the ever-present awareness of mortality.
• Delayed Publication: The book’s release was delayed due to her unexpected health issues, which became an emotional catalyst for many poems.
  • (Kate, 02:47): "I got to experience a midlife crisis very early. At the very green age of 39, I went through some pretty serious health issues and had to delay the book... facing my own mortality and coming to terms with a lot of things."
• Tone and Range: While rooted in somber experiences, Kate notes that the book includes lighter, playful pieces.

Health, Vulnerability, and Taboo Topics

• Honesty About Health: Kate openly shares the physical challenges she faced—including pelvic floor prolapse and neurological symptoms—which inform the collection.
  • (Kate, 04:04): "I just said rectum. I was experiencing a pelvic floor prolapse that was pretty serious... So much so that eventually they said, I think you need to go to the ALS clinic."
• Impact on Writing: The crisis infused urgency and depth into her work, with some poems written over years and others springing from this intense time.

Motherhood and Family

• Children: Kate talks about having four children across high school to elementary ages, highlighting how motherhood permeates her themes and motivations.
• Anxiety and Mortality: She discusses the universal maternal fear of separation from children and how it shapes her poetry. (Kate, 22:54)

Body Image and the Female Experience

• Body as Subject: Body image—a recurring theme—re-emerges, further complicated by aging and health changes.
  • (Kate, 06:23): "Especially when you live in a bigger body, which I have 90% of my life... my body is always a topic of discussion."
• Vulnerability in Sharing: She nearly omitted some revealing poems due to the scrutiny they would prompt but kept them for honesty.

Trauma and Survival

• Writing About Assault: Kate bravely reads and discusses a poem rooted in sexual assault she experienced in college, emphasizing the persistence of trauma and how it continues to surface in her writing.
  • (Zibby, 07:54, reading from Kate’s poem): “A man who hated women carried me to my bedroom and engaged with my lifeless body, resulting in sexual assault and human papillomavirus... What are the statute of limitations on anger, on revenge, on how long one man's ego will find its way onto the page?”
  • (Kate, 08:18): "That don't go away. It doesn't matter how old you are."
• Solidarity: She references the prevalence of these experiences and their continued impact.

Everyday Beauty and Meaning

• Moments That Matter: Poems like “Before the Guests” celebrate ordinary joys—laughter, late-night conversations, family, and love over material perfection.
  • (Kate, 10:00): "When you're having guests over and you start looking at everything with that critical eye when none of that matters... What matters the most are those late night conversations and the human relationship."

Technology and Modern Life

• Screens and Disconnection: Kate explores our obsession with documenting life on our phones and the unintended consequences, particularly for children.
  • (Zibby, 11:43, reading): "We say, look, phone. And turn it on ourselves. Look at my face, I'm so old and ratty... It would be a shame if you missed all this."
  • (Kate, 11:43): "We're on our phones a lot... it's tough as a mom."
• Parenting in the Digital Age: She reflects on social media’s impact and foresees regret in current attitudes to children’s online exposure.

Marriage and Partnership

• Domestic Realism: In poems like “Marriage Poem,” Kate finds poetry in mundane marital negotiations, the daily decision of dinner, and the quiet acts of love.
  • (Kate, 17:02): "My husband says I have a way of making everything into something. The happiest hours of my life have been. Alone, watching my family through a window. I love my life except for the noise of it."
• Partners as Muse: Her husband features throughout her poetry, sometimes without previewing his appearances until publication.

The Craft and Process of Poetry

• Inspiration: Poems take shape from everyday life and are captured quickly in notes or emails; the formal crafting is scheduled.
  • (Kate, 17:28): "A lot of the lines and the concepts and the imagery come just when I'm living my life."
• Structuring a Collection: Poems are laid out and rearranged physically to find emotional and thematic flow.
• Role of Social Media: Kate credits Instagram with poetry’s resurgence—short, impactful pieces suit the format and contemporary audiences (Kate, 23:41).

Poetry in Contemporary Culture

• Changing Perceptions: Kate critiques how poetry is taught (“dead old white guys”) and celebrates the momentum of living, diverse voices in the genre.
  • (Kate, 18:28): "We do such a disservice to poetry in school. We teach dead old white guys and it is a snooze fest."
• Essence of Poetry: She describes poetry as an ineffable convergence of rhythm, image, and resonance—“like when a chord is played and you hear it.” (Kate, 19:20)

Living With Anxiety & Being “Dramatic”

• Panic Attack & Medical Anxiety: Kate recounts misinterpreting a panic attack for a heart attack, driving herself to the ER, and coping with the fear of being “overly dramatic”—a label writers often bear since childhood.
  • (Kate, 21:31): "Because I was afraid of being wrong and feeling like I was being dramatic. My parents always called me dramatic my whole life. I think a lot of writers... were called [that]."
• Advice for Listeners: Encourages listeners not to dismiss serious symptoms—“definitely go to the hospital if your arm hurts…” (Kate, 22:26)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Health and Midlife:

"At the very green age of 39, I went through some pretty serious health issues... facing my own mortality and kind of coming to terms with a lot of things you do when you face your immortality." — Kate Baer, 02:47

On Body Image:

"Especially when you live in a bigger body, which I have... my body is always a topic of discussion. If you search my name, the first thing that will pop up is... weight loss Reddit." — Kate Baer, 06:23

On Writing About Trauma:

"I can't believe I'm still talking about this... and yet I kept it in there because I know from so many women... there's so many of us who are living with those stories that don't go away." — Kate Baer, 08:18

On What Truly Matters:

"What matters the most are those late night conversations and the human relationship... we're all going to die." — Kate Baer, 10:00

On Parenting and Phones:

"We're on our phones a lot... it's tough as a mom... I think we're gonna look back on giving our kids access to social media like we do when we put newborns in the front seat with a bottle of juice." — Kate Baer, 11:43–12:34

On Anxiety & Self-Perception:

"I was afraid of being wrong and feeling like I was being dramatic. My parents always called me dramatic my whole life. I think a lot of writers... were called [that]." — Kate Baer, 21:31

On Poetry’s Place:

"We do such a disservice to poetry in school. We teach dead old white guys and it is a snooze fest... But I've met so many incredible teachers since putting out my own books who teach not just my work, but other living poets, women." — Kate Baer, 18:28

On Success and Social Media:

“People love boiled down storytelling. And I think that’s—especially during COVID—people were looking for that. The platform lends itself to that kind of boiled down storytelling.” — Kate Baer, 23:41

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introducing Kate Baer and Her New Book: 02:06–02:47
• Health Issues & the Book’s Delay: 02:47–05:01
• Body Image and Poetic Themes: 05:08–06:55
• Sexual Assault & Trauma in Poetry: 07:16–08:57
• Celebrating Family & Relationships: 09:18–10:55
• Phones, Modern Life, and Parenting: 11:05–12:56
• Marriage Poem and Domestic Life: 16:05–17:15
• Writing Process & Arranging a Collection: 17:15–17:55
• What is Poetry?: 19:07–19:55
• Panic Attack and Shame Around Illness: 20:03–21:31
• Motherhood & Mortality: 22:38–22:54
• Why Kate’s Poetry Resonates: 23:41–24:21

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Tone & Style

The episode is marked by Kate Baer’s forthrightness and Zibby’s supportive, encouraging hosting style. The mood moves between solemnity and laughter, warmth and somber self-reflection—always returning to honesty and connection. Baer is unflinching about sharing the gritty truths of womanhood and modern life, while never losing sight of everyday joys.

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Summary

Listeners will come away with a deeper appreciation for Kate Baer’s poetry and the lived experiences that shape it. Whether discussing medical scares, the messiness of motherhood, wounds that do not fully heal, or the wild beauty of normal days, Baer’s poems and this conversation are an invitation to seek meaning, connection, and humor in the midst of struggle.

To buy Kate's How About Now, visit your local bookstore or follow Kate and Zibby on social media for updates and readings.

Transcript

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[Kate Baer]

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[Kate Baer]

Yes, Chef. This is so nice.

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[Kate Baer]

Ooh, tiramisu.

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[Kate Baer]

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[Paige Desorbo]

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[Zibby Owens]

Welcome to Totally Booked Live at the Whitby Hotel. I am so excited to be here today with Kate Baer, New York Times bestselling poet and someone who I have so much respect for, and read her substack, and she's just awesome. Anyway, welcome.

[Kate Baer]

Thank you, Zibby. It's so lovely to be here. I'm honored. Yay.

[Zibby Owens]

Thank you, Kate. Okay, how about now is your new collection. Congratulations. You put so much into this collection. So many experiences that you somehow sum up with just a couple lines. And we learned so much about you and your experience and your emotions. Talk a little bit about this collection in particular and just tell everybody about it.

[Kate Baer]

Yeah. This is my fourth poetry book. Poetry is a funny thing because it's listed in the family fiction section, so you can really hide behind that. But at least for me, this book, just like my other books, is extremely personal. I did have to delay its publication a year. It was supposed to come out last year, but even though I've always been a really late bloomer, I got to experience a midlife crisis very early. At the very green age of 39, I went through some pretty serious health issues and had to delay the book, but which ended up setting a stage for a lot of it. You know, facing my own mortality and kind of coming to terms with a lot of things that you do when you face your immortality. And also, you know, my kids getting older and just my life feeling like it was passing me by so quickly and having this feeling of like, well, I have to do this now because I don't know how much longer I have. So that was kind of the backdrop for this book. I also think it's playful and has some light hearted parts too, but that's kind of where the book started.

[Zibby Owens]

Can you share a little more about your health issues or are they secret?

[Kate Baer]

Well, some of them are still unresolved. Some of them are very common but are never talked about. Like, can you say rectum on this podcast?

[Zibby Owens]

We can now.

[Kate Baer]

I just said rectum. I was experiencing a pelvic floor prolapse that was pretty serious. I was having a bunch of neurological issues that were very unexplained, so. So much so that eventually they said, I think you need to go to the ALS clinic, which is obviously a very, very scary phrase to hear. There was just a lot of things that were unknown. There still are a lot of things that are unknown. I don't have als, I don't think just a lot of weird neurological issues. So I spent a whole year kind of spiraling about that and feeling very scared for my health. And I've got four children. So that, like I said, that really did influence a lot of the book. Not all of it with poetry, especially poetry collections. There are some poems you write for 10 years or five years or two minutes. It really depends. So some of those had been cooking for a while, but a lot of them were born from kind of that crisis that I went through.

[Zibby Owens]

How old are your kids now?

[Kate Baer]

I've got a high schooler and a middle schooler and two still in elementary school.

[Zibby Owens]

Can I read a poem or two?

[Kate Baer]

Oh, sure.

[Zibby Owens]

Is that okay? And then you can hopefully just talk about it a little bit. You have a number of things, yes, of course, about the health thing, but some more on the superficial end of things. And you talk a lot about body image and weight and all of that. There's one called say Less. I'm smiling for no reason except that I've lost weight. And when I'm feeling very thin, I watch a power rise inside me, snake like and unrepenting, feeding on the passing comment, the look up and look down. Good girls always win, and that's a problem. Another is God giveth and she taketh away. And while I've lost all my reason, what I have is Viper's breath. If you're still here and I'm still hungry, this is your fair warning. There's nothing I won't do for your dependent love.

[Kate Baer]

Yeah, yeah. Body has been a theme through all my books, and so I'm not surprised that theme has spilled over to how about now? Because of all the health issues, my body has changed once again. It's like most women. It's changed a lot. Like I said, I have four children. And so, yeah, that poem snuck in there. I almost cut it because I knew I'd be asked about it on stage. So sorry. No, I'm happy to. I'm happy to. I'm about to start.

[Zibby Owens]

It's almost like she told me.

[Kate Baer]

Yeah. But, yeah, I think especially when you live in a bigger body, which I have 90% of my life. I was shopping in the ladies plus size section in fifth grade. I felt, and I still feel this way, like my body is always a topic of discussion. If you search my name, the first thing that will pop up is kpier. Weight loss Reddit. There's nothing to see, though. So you can look, but there's nothing to see. Yeah, it's been a topic of discussion in my life outside of me, since I've been a child. And so that's kind of where that poem came from.

[Zibby Owens]

Wow. Okay. There are a few other ones as well, and sorry for that. This one, please.

[Kate Baer]

You can ask me anything. Yeah, okay.

[Zibby Owens]

Well, I'm about to, so I'm glad you said good.

[Kate Baer]

I've already told you about My rectum that's falling out of my body. So truly, there's nothing off the table.

[Zibby Owens]

Well, we're going to the gynecology intake form at this point.

[Kate Baer]

Sure, sure.

[Zibby Owens]

And the way you've done this, you probably can't see, is it's literally an intake form, as if it's in a doctor's office. But you've only filled in a couple things throughout, and then you want us to read those things.

[Kate Baer]

And in the arc, it's actually misprinted, so if you read it, it won't read.

[Zibby Owens]

Right.

[Kate Baer]

The graphic has been corrected. But, yeah, that's a very visual poem, which I've really enjoyed putting into this collection. There's a whole bunch of them. I did a whole book of erasures, but this time I decided to do things like a form and then kind of use that to make sort of an erasure, the inverse of that into a poem.

[Zibby Owens]

Well, this one says, my senior year of college, a man who hated women carried me to my bedroom and engaged with my lifeless body, resulting in sexual assault and human papillomavirus. What are the statute of limitations on anger, on revenge, on how long one man's ego will find its way onto the page?

[Kate Baer]

I'm really getting into it.

[Zibby Owens]

Welcome. It's been 10 minutes.

[Kate Baer]

It's been 10 minutes. Yeah. He, this person, and this whole story from my college days is also in what Kind of of Woman? Which is where that last line comes from. The fact that this has once again came up in my writing was so frustrating to me. Like, I can't believe I'm still talking about this. I can't believe I'm giving this guy another page in a book. And so. And yet I kept it in there because I know from so many women. What is it, one in four? There's so many of us who are living with those stories that. That don't go away. It doesn't matter how old you are. And so, yeah, that's where that poem came from.

[Zibby Owens]

I'm really sorry you went through that.

[Kate Baer]

Yeah. Thanks.

[Zibby Owens]

Thank you for putting it in here.

[Kate Baer]

Yeah.

[Zibby Owens]

Thank you for dealing with me asking you.

[Kate Baer]

No problem. What else can we talk about?

[Zibby Owens]

I mean, this is your book. You put it all out there.

[Kate Baer]

I know. I'm so happy to do it. Yeah.

[Zibby Owens]

I mean, I can't really find too many really superficial ones.

[Kate Baer]

No. Good. Good. That's good.

[Zibby Owens]

That's, like, the whole point of the book.

[Capital One Saver Card Customer 1]

Yeah.

[Kate Baer]

Yeah.

[Zibby Owens]

Can I read this one? I thought called before the Guests.

[Kate Baer]

Yes. Okay.

[Zibby Owens]

You smiled, so that's good. Okay. In the end, it's who we loved. How we'd sit out on the patio after it had rained, telling the same stories about the family dog. How when invited over for a campfire, a round of cards, a late night summer swim, we'd pile in the car, show up empty handed to a house lit up by familiar conversation. Yes, you can build whole kingdoms of picture perfect laundry rooms and remodeled kitchen walls. But when the light comes from every direction, ready to carry you to the great unknown, there is only one thing I'll care to remember. August nights, September mornings. Entire seasons spent loving you.

[Kate Baer]

Oh, there's a nice one in there. The biggest feedback from my editor has been, can you write some nice poems? Maybe some ones people could frame that aren't dragging you back to college or to your pelvic floor. Floor prolapse. So I put that one in there for her, but also for myself. That one was born after a total spiral. We were having weekend guests and I kept saying to my husband, we still have this 30 year old kitchen backsplash. I'm so embarrassed. And he's like, what are you talking about? This isn't the most important thing. And I know a lot of us can resonate with that. When you're having guests over and you start looking at everything with that critical eye when none of that matters. I have to remind myself of that all the time. We're all going to die. I think what matters the most are those late night conversations in the human relationship. So, yeah.

[Zibby Owens]

And how bad is the backsplash?

[Kate Baer]

It's pretty bad. It's like brown patterned 90s black backsplash. Yeah, it's tough.

[Zibby Owens]

Sorry about that.

[Kate Baer]

We'll get there.

[Zibby Owens]

Okay, maybe one more. Meanwhile, how about that? Is that okay? At the concert, we show our phones. Our favorite musician on vacation, we show them the waves, the children playing in the sand. We say, look, phone. And turn it on ourselves. Look at my face, I'm so old and ratty. We say to our phones. Now look at the sunset. A four car pile up, a dog in khaki pants. You must remember this, we say to our phones. Have it when we want it. We will never want it. A gray heron sails across the sky. Look, we say, pulling our phones from our back pockets. You don't want to miss this. It would be a shame if you missed all this.

[Kate Baer]

Big bummer. That's another bummer poem. But never. It's never been more timely. I think, gosh, we're on our phones a lot. I just got off the phone with the school principal. Two days ago, I actually kind of hung up on him, crying because my son. Gosh, can I talk about this? My son in study hall. A man got assassinated a few weeks ago, two weeks ago. And I don't want to talk about that. But he saw it in study hall and I was like, can you please have the kids put their phones away? And we see a lot that we don't want to see. We're on it a lot. And it's tough. It's tough as a mom. Yeah. Which that's not what that poem is about. But that's my current. That's what is in my head right now about phones is how much it's affecting our kids. Yeah.

[Zibby Owens]

Is he okay?

[Kate Baer]

I think he's okay. Yeah. Yeah. But it's hard. I kind of think that we're gonna look back on giving our kids access to social media like we do when we put newborns in the front seat with a bottle of juice. I think that's how we'll look at it. Like that was pretty silly that we would let children be on social media. Yeah. Okay.

[Zibby Owens]

Calling home to get them off right now. Oh, my God. My YouTube and Roblox addicted children.

[Kate Baer]

Yeah. Okay.

[Zibby Owens]

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[Capital One Saver Card Customer 1]

Ready to order?

[Kate Baer]

Yes. We're earning unlimited 3% cash back on dining and entertainment with a Capital One Saver card. So let's just get one of everything. Everything.

[Capital One Saver Card Chef/Announcer]

Fire everything. The Capital One Saver card is at table 27 and they're earning unlimited 3% cash back.

[Kate Baer]

Yes, Chef. This is so nice.

[Capital One Saver Card Chef/Announcer]

Had a feeling you'd want 3% cash back on dessert.

[Kate Baer]

Ooh, tiramisu.

[Capital One Saver Card Chef/Announcer]

Earn unlimited 3% cash back on dining and entertainment with the capital One saver card. Capital One what's in your wallet?

[Kate Baer]

Terms apply. See capitalone.com for details.

[Paige Desorbo]

Hi, it's Paige Desorbo from Giggly Squad. You ever stand in front of your closet and just say, I have nothing to wear while you're literally surrounded by clothes? And because same. So I started listing pieces. I'm over on Depop and honestly, it's been amazing. You can sell what you're done with and someone out there will love it. And the best part about it is there's no seller fee, so the money you make actually stays in your pocket, which feels very chic. It's also insanely easy. I listed something while watching TV and it sold before the episode even ended. So download the Depop app and list your first item today because your old outfit could be someone else's new favorite. Depop where taste recognizes taste. Payment processing fees, boosting fees still apply. For more info, visit depop.com.

[Kate Baer]

Can I read one more, please?

[Zibby Owens]

Okay, this is called Please still get this book. It's really nice.

[Kate Baer]

There are lots. Am I selling you?

[Zibby Owens]

But this is the last one I'll read. It's called Marriage Poem. This is a poem about marriage. It doesn't have any sex in it. I know you might be looking. Instead, we have whole milk fruit flies, four kids, apologies dressed as turkey sandwiches. At some point in every day, someone must decide what everyone else will eat for dinner. My grandmother said men only want one thing from their wives. But now she's dead and I can't ask her what it was. Among my Google tabs, there is a list of places we should research for vacation. Money is an issue. Children are an issue. A 90 minute bedtime routine is an issue. But back to dinner. Pot roast or salmon steaks? My husband says I have a way of making everything into something. The happiest hours of my life have been. Alone, watching my family through a window. I love my life except for the noise of it. The thing about dinner is someone has to decide to step out of their own way.

[Kate Baer]

Yeah, my husband keeps finding his way on the pages too. Much to his chagrin, he reads the book that the day it comes out. I hope he likes that one.

[Zibby Owens]

Oh, no. So he hasn't read any of these?

[Kate Baer]

No, no, no. I think he'll like that one.

[Zibby Owens]

I think he'll like that one too. So what is your process with writing all the poems? Figuring out which to put in a collection, the order of the collection. How do you deal with all that? Do you put it all on the floor and rearrange or.

[Kate Baer]

Yeah, I do put it out on the floor. For sure. Yeah. I think a lot of the lines and the concepts and the imagery come just when I'm living my life. I write it down or I email myself or I put it in my notes app. And then the actual writing part, the hard part, that's scheduled, that's my office hours, and that's when I'm doing the writing. But the meat of the poems come from everyday life, especially ones like that.

[Zibby Owens]

And how do you feel being a poet today?

[Kate Baer]

I mean, I think that people have a sense of image of poets, Although that's really changed because of social media. I feel great about it. I mean, poets are as old as language. And so to me, I feel so honored to be recognized as just one in a lineage of so many. But, yeah, it's. I mean, it's great.

[Zibby Owens]

You know, I feel like poetry because of. I feel like how it's taught in school, it's hard to. Maybe this is just my own.

[Kate Baer]

We do such a disservice to poetry in school. We teach dead old white guys and it is a snooze fest. I mean, I didn't like poetry either as a child. I mean, I was writing my own poetry about cats and my sister and my parents. But the poetry I learned in school, we weren't reading contemporary poets. But I've met so many incredible teachers since putting out my own books who teach not just my. My work, but other living poets, women. And I do think that is changing. But, yeah, back in the 90s, we were learning about dead old white guys. Yeah, it's pretty boring.

[Zibby Owens]

This is gonna sound like a stupid question, but what makes something a poem versus just a few lines of an essay or something else? Like, how do you know? How do you know it's a poem?

[Kate Baer]

I think you know when it's a poem. I think the reader knows when it's a poem. There's Poetry in everything. People always ask me, what poetry should I read to my children? And I say, well, most children's books are poetry. The cadence, the rhyme, the imagery. I think poetry is everywhere in children's books, in music, in essays, in fiction. You see it everywhere. I think you just know. It's like when a chord is played and you hear it. You hear the sounds come together, the images come together.

[Zibby Owens]

I think it's everywhere in the collection. You write about going to the hospital and having it be a panic attack.

[Kate Baer]

Yeah.

[Zibby Owens]

Talk a little bit about that.

[Kate Baer]

Well, I'd never had a panic attack, and I never thought I knew what anxiety was, but because I was having all these medical issues, I started to. I started to experience anxiety basically for the first time in my life in that full body way. And because parts of my body were literally numb, actually, some of them still are, I would feel this panic come over me, and my chest squeezed and I couldn't breathe. And I thought, oh, this is a heart attack. But it was obviously very. I didn't tell anyone. I didn't tell my husband. My husband's a physician. He was in the hospital six floors up, working. I didn't tell him. I just went by myself. I just cried in the emergency room. I said to the person I was checking in, I said, I think I'm having a heart attack. Or maybe I'm just making this up. It wasn't a heart attack. I was making it up. I guess deeply humiliating, but ultimately taught me a lot about listening to my body and also just. It's okay if you're thinking that. I don't. I think most of us are aware that women experience heart attacks all the time and just ignore it. And so that's what I had in my head. Yeah. A very humbling experience, but ultimately ended up in the book.

[Zibby Owens]

But it shouldn't make you embarrassed. I mean, this happens to so many people.

[Kate Baer]

It feels.

[Zibby Owens]

It feels that way. So you're not making it up.

[Kate Baer]

My arm hurt. I was like, I'm having all the signs. It's happening. Driving myself there, like, maybe I hope I don't crash. Just a wild time. Yeah.

[Zibby Owens]

And why did you not want to call anybody?

[Kate Baer]

Because I was afraid of being wrong and feeling like I was being dramatic. I was one of those. My parents always called me dramatic my whole life. I think a lot of writers. This is something they were called. And so I just kind of was carrying. I've been carrying that around my whole life. Like, don't be dramatic. Don't make this into Something that it's not. And. Yeah, I mean, don't be so bad about that. Yeah. I mean, nothing. I called my husband eventually from the room. He's like, I'll be right down. Yeah. And was basically like, it's okay. Next time just tell me. We can walk through it and you can come to the hospital if you need to. So, yeah, it was definitely. I have to learn things the hard way. So. Yeah, I'm 40 and still. I'm still learning these lessons.

[Zibby Owens]

We're all still learning lessons. Yeah, it's okay. But at least you're sharing your lessons with us. So you can give us like a little shortcut. Yeah, it's like Chutes and Ladders. Like your poems are each a ladder up to something we can skip.

[Kate Baer]

Yeah, definitely go to the hospital if your arm hurts and you have a squeeze in your chest. I'm not saying that. Please go. Yeah, maybe don't drive yourself.

[Zibby Owens]

Maybe call someone in case you are. Right.

[Kate Baer]

Yeah, sure.

[Zibby Owens]

I mean, you never know. I mean, what if. Okay, whatever. Yeah, moving on. When you thought about your kids. Cause you write about this too, about like the notion of if something were wrong, if you had to leave your kids, all of that. How are you feeling about that?

[Kate Baer]

I think that's a lot of mother's worst fear is being apart from their children in any way. And so, yeah, I think that fear which was born the second my son was born 14 years ago, has carried into all my work. And especially in a poem like that, where again, I was facing that my facing my own mortality kind of for the first time and reckoning with what that meant for everybody else. Yeah.

[Zibby Owens]

And you've written four collections of these fabulous essays. You are like a star on social media with like a gazillion followers. What do you think when you look at your own work resonates so much. What do you think is hitting home? Like when you post a poem, what are the things you're like, this is really gonna get him.

[Kate Baer]

I don't know if I think that. I think that people love. And this is what I love about poetry. People love boiled down storytelling. And I think that's especially during COVID People were looking for that. That's when my first book came out. So I think that's some of it. It's also just easy to access online. You can't post your short story there. So the platform lends itself to that kind of boiled down storytelling. So I think that's why there's been the success there. But yeah, it's Honestly, the surprise of a lifetime that anyone bought my first book. And I can't believe I still get to do this. It's a huge honor.

[Zibby Owens]

Well, it's so good. Congratulations.

[Paige Desorbo]

Thank you.

[Zibby Owens]

Thank you so much.

[Kate Baer]

And thank you for coming. Thank you for having me.

[Zibby Owens]

Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly Moms don't have time to read Books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram, ibbyowens and spread the word.

[Kate Baer]

Thanks so much.

[Zibby Owens]

Oh, and buy the books.

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