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Zibby Owens
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Zibby Owens
Hi, this is Zibby Owens and you're.
Listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly Moms don't have Time to Read Books. In my daily show, I interview today's greatest, best selling, buzziest or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author and obviously podcaster, I get A comprehensive look at everything that's coming out. And spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to stay in the know, get insider insights and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com and follow me on Instagram. Ibby Owens.
Owen Lewis is the author of A Prayer of Six Wings. Owen is the author of four collections of poetry and three chapbooks. Honors include the 2024 E.E. cummings Prize, the 2023 Guernsey International Poetry Prize, the 2023 Rumi Prize for Poetry, the International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine, and the Jean Pedrick Chatbook Award at Columbia University. He is a professor of psychiatry in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics and teaches narrative medicine.
Welcome, Owen, thank you so much for coming on Totally Booked with Zibby to talk about your beautiful poetry collection, A Prayer of Six Wings, which is so beautiful and so moving. Congratulations.
Owen Lewis
Thank you so much. Thank you.
Zibby Owens
Why don't you give an overview of this beautiful, slim, poignant collection?
Owen Lewis
Okay. Well, as so Many Jews worldwide October 7th hit all of us, and, you know, the overtones to the Shoah were haunting for most of us. On top of that, my personal story is complicated by having a daughter who lives in Israel, two grandchildren, then three now, thank God. And so it's a new level of worry when you have close family, although everyone, all 1200 murdered that day felt like family. So in many ways, the book kind of blew through me. You know, I can tell you how I found my hook into it, but it both blew through me and kept me together for that year of very intense worrying and often not knowing what to do with your worry, then compounded by how quickly the world turned against Israel, began to see Israel as the aggressor. And I lived, you know, the epicenter, it seemed to me of the destruction of hostage posters was 79th and Broadway. And every morning the posters were ripped down, defaced. Terrible words written over the posters. You'd seen them in pieces. And the next day, dutifully put back. And I was walking back from Lincoln center one night, side to side with someone who. Who was ripping down a poster. I was about to say something. I mean, he probably sensed the words coming out of my mouth. Fortunately, my wife pulled me back a little. He raised the scissors at me, like, take a step closer and I'm going to take you out. And so it felt like the war was not just a distant war, but was really being fought right here in New York. And there Was no separation. And so, you know, my start, you know, begins, these are my cousins. That line came to me. My wife has a distant cousin whose child was at. The adult child was at the festival. She got out, thank God. So that was my first line. The second. That was my first poem. The second. Those haunting images of Noah Argamani, the beautiful young woman being thrown over the motorcycle. And of course, my first granddaughter is named Noah. So that first poem shifts from images of Noah to my Noah. And it could be that name repeats as you read. And so they're all my Noahs. Right? The third poem. And then I thought it just took me away. The first hostage released was, if you can recall, there's an older woman who said shalom to her captors. Her name was Yocheved Lifshitz. And in Minsk, that was our family name, you know. So again, I had this immediate tie in, not only as a people, but as very specific persons by name, you know. So then there was no stopping it. There was no stopping the book after that.
Zibby Owens
Oh, my gosh. Well, I've read so much about October 7th, the aftermath, the feelings, all of it. But there was something different about this. You not only did you talk about your own fear as a father, as a grandfather, you also sort of interspersed all of these New York Times articles and factual things. So you're giving us a timeline, but you're also then punctuating it with your own sort of heart wounds, if you will. And then little snippets like, you have this here. I'm just gonna read this one thing. You have this one short poem called Overheard in a New York Restaurant. I can't talk about Israel tonight. I know. I can't not talk about Israel tonight. I know. Can we talk about here? Sure. Let's try to talk about here. I mean, it's like you capture the moment. Like, this is how we all feel to talk, to not talk. Basically, nobody knows how to get through this time. And that is what all of the essays, the poems try to do. Like to intellectualize it, to understand it, to put words to it. Even your experience at Columbia, getting caught, like, in the mob. Talk about that scene, too. I mean, you're in it. You're really in it in every way.
Owen Lewis
Right? No, I think you point out something very essential. It might seem like poetic journalism, but I was obsessed with headlines. What now? What now? What's today? What's today? So interspersing those headlines. I mean, I'm not reporting the news per se. I think it's William Carlos Williams, who says something like, I'm going to paraphrase it poorly. Poets don't report on the news, yet people die for the lack of what they bring to the news. That was a bad paraphrase, but that's okay.
Zibby Owens
I get the gist.
Owen Lewis
Yeah. So, yeah, the headlines oriented in time and part of what I thought was a way of recording somewhat objectively, but subjectively. This was a year I lived through. This was a year we all lived through. And at a time when the poetry establishment was really disallowing the validity of Jewish suffering and disallowing, marginalizing the experience of Jews, it felt like this set of experience is going to be lost. It has to be recorded. And, you know, I think many of my colleagues in the poetry world, you know, are really pushing for people to make statements about genocide. I just came from awp, where I guess I'm a little late to the party. But this whole concept of the weaponization of Jewish memory and the weaponization of Jewish trauma, I thought this isn't really logical if they wanted to call it. Some people use Jewish trauma as a justification. Yes, there are people who do that. But to go right to that word weaponization is fighting a battle that shouldn't be. I mean, if anything, the poets should be out front saying, let's listen to one another. But it's happening a little bit, but. But not as much. So as far as this book, I felt I needed to make a record. And that was both some of the headlines which signified where we were and, you know, my personal timeline in this.
Zibby Owens
Wow. By the way, at awp, you know, there was an email that went out to everybody who was moderating ahead of time suggesting that they all stand up in support of, you know, against the genocide and all of that. And, you know, well, it's just the whole thing is mind blowing how this conflict is right here. It is everywhere. It is surrounding us, literally on the streets and in the business and in the work and in all of it. So, yeah, I have to say, to.
Owen Lewis
AWP's credit, last year, and I was very tense, I did a panel. I led two panels. One on the poetry of aging. That's a whole other story. The panel was called Damaged Bodies in a World Writing the Jewish Body and Body Politicians, which was really a way of saying, we really want to talk about institutional and social antisemitism as well as personal antisemitism. I was very apprehensive that our panel was going to be disrupted. And AWP did a very good job this year, last year, anything Jewish was disrupted in a very not nice way. But they really allowed and made sure that the spaces were safe. So I have to credit them. Were you at WP just now?
Zibby Owens
I didn't go. One of my colleagues went, but I was, I couldn't go. It's a lot, but I got, I got some reports. So, to your own personal story. So your daughter is a musician?
Owen Lewis
Yes.
Zibby Owens
Can I read this? A belief in order poem that you wrote. You say a belief in order. My daughter returns to bring music to a stunned country, her orchestra straining in every note, still echoing halls once overfilled, once Beethoven's timpanied fifth. I wanted to tell her to be safe, stay in New York. She knew all I didn't say. If I hear missiles, she stays in their midst to rally the percussions, the clear voices of a congregation of horns, flutes, luring frightened hopos back to the singing banyans dreaming doves to the date palms, the strings full timber, seeking the autumn garden's blue muscari, the field's scented white saffron crocus, their necessary music that heals even as it anticipates the wounds. Did I even pronounce all that right? That was so beautiful.
Owen Lewis
You did it. You read it beautifully, Zippy.
Zibby Owens
Oh, thank you.
Thank you. You can take me on the road with you if you like.
Owen Lewis
Hoopoes are the national bird of Israel, and the flowers were chosen, their fall flowers, but the blue and white. But yes, she, she, she returned with absolute. I mean, I, I, I got them to come back briefly, but they turned right around and, and, and went back, especially as the orchestra was beginning to perform. They did a lot of outreach. This is the orchestra that plays for the Israeli opera. They have a symphonic series and such a commitment to bring art, you know, to not let that be lost in the midst of this trauma. So, you know, I was very proud of her.
Zibby Owens
Well, you can, you can feel your pride and you can feel your pain. And the coexistence of the two, I think, adds so much depth.
Owen Lewis
Right.
Zibby Owens
We want our kids to be close and safe. We want them to accomplish, we want them to do what makes them happy. And yet that instinct to protect it just, like, doesn't go away. Right?
Owen Lewis
Right. Never.
Zibby Owens
And there's a bit of this, like, playing music on the Titanic vibe in the poems, like, what happens. But she's just doing it. She's the musician. And no matter what happens, it's beautiful. With the sirens that come later in the show, I mean, just amazing.
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Zibby Owens
You have the one scene with your granddaughter's birthday party where everyone has to climb up a ladder, go into Safe room for 5 minutes then go back down. And at the end, your daughter is like, why can't. Why is my birth. Your granddaughter says like, well, why is it over? Why is my birthday over? And it's like that devastation paired with the bigger things that she doesn't totally realize.
Owen Lewis
Oh my gosh, you know, I want another birthday. Yes, that, that's. You realize. I mean, we hear it as saying at this moment in time, is she even going to have another birthday? I mean, she wanted, of course, the party keep going. But oh my God, when she said that, we nearly all started crying. I mean, her parents and I heard it. It was after, you know, in the great sweep up after a party. And it was quite haunting how children know something. You know, I do think she knew something on some level when she said I want another birthday.
Zibby Owens
You also used an expression that I had not heard before. A generation's miscarriage. Oh yeah, talk about that.
Owen Lewis
Well, in the second poem, where my granddaughter, you know, I'm waiting for a lesson. She's waiting for me to speak, and I'm wondering, is there going to be another generation? Will there be other generations? So that this image of another Noah under this pock marked blood pocked covering it felt like, broadly, this is very specifically a miscarriage for the young people who are every, you know, the age of reproduction. But it's a historic miscarriage in. In some way. How did we get here? You know, there are some Israelis who just want more and more land, but most Israelis that I know really want peace and coexistence. I want to believe that Hamas has preempted the voice of Palestinians. Certainly they have suffered terribly. And in my heart of hearts, I don't believe that every Palestinian is out for genocide. They want coexistence. And in fact, many Palestinians within Israel live as full citizens and value that relationship. So this is like a historic miscarriage. How did we get here?
Zibby Owens
Well, I mean, that's what makes you a poet, right? Is the use of words, sparsely, to represent so much more that go in multiple directions. Yes. And then the last part I wanted to read, you say later, I don't know when life can return. And in this dialogue, 40 years, my friend, our grandchildren's lifetimes, not ours. Is that what you think?
Owen Lewis
Kind of. I feel like the Israel that I knew, although I have to say, life springs back, at least in Tel Aviv, which is what I know best. But you have a generation of traumatized people. The children who are exposed to this, how did they recover? How do they ever speak of this? And yet when you look at the history of our people, we spring back after the Shoah in amazing ways. And I also want to say the whole Mizrahi Jewish world, you know, we sometimes only highlight the Shoah, but the Mizrahi world had their own Shoah in the early and mid-50s. And somehow we spring back. So maybe it's not 40 years, but it's that sense that just as we as slaves needed to find a new mentality, I guess I'm looking forward to the post traumatic concept of being Jewish and coexisting. And, you know, I think the Mizrahi Jews and the Mizrahi poetry, contemporary Israeli poetry, is so important because just as the Ashkenaz, we have a history of living with Christians in good and bad times, they have a history of living with Muslims in good and bad times. And so I think looking a bit to their poetry is also a way. But I very much believe that deep listening, you know, we can, our diplomats hopefully will create some kind of ceasefire. But let's never mistake a ceasefire for peace. There's a lot of person to person work. And I think deep listening and poetry is one vehicle into that listening that paves the way for real peace, not just a ceasefire.
Zibby Owens
Wow. Can you quickly touch on how you are a doctor? Like, to me, Dr. Brain is not poet brain right there. It's an analytic, math, science brain. And yet here you are so creative. And maybe that is totally wrong of me to even say or think.
Owen Lewis
No, no. It's like it takes a lifetime to master anything, really. But I think that I don't really conceive of these poles of my life as different. First of all, I'm a psychiatrist. I'm also a child psychiatrist. Listening and words being my vehicle of hearing, of healing and hearing. That's been entrenched whether I was writing or not writing. I'm listening and I'm trying to communicate. The child psychiatrist part of me keeps right in the foreground how important play is. I play with my adult patients, but poetry, creativity comes out of play and that kind of open space where anything is possible. And in my academic world, fortunately, I've worn a few hats my whole life. I was also devoting a good part of each week to teaching. But since five, six years ago, the Columbia Medical School has a freestanding department of Medical Humanities and ethics. And I began to shift my teaching into narrative medicine. And maybe two years ago, three years ago, I was given a joint appointment as a professor of psychiatry in Medical Humanities and ethics. So it's all kind of come together. You know, the big conflict of my youth, be an English professor. I get to do both. I get to poetry, to medical students. I have a course on adolescent development through literature and really using literature to sensitize doctors to adolescents. And being an adolescent. So I'm in a fortunate position where it's all come together. It wasn't always. There were stretches of time where I just didn't write. Being a doctor, having a young family, there wasn't a lot left over for a while.
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Zibby Owens
Do you feel safe as a Jew.
Owen Lewis
At Columbia right now at the medical school? Absolutely. There was far. I was exposed to no disruptions. Occasionally when I've had to be on the main campus, I think that there's. Columbia has a long way to go. I mean, the, even the arrest of these students, which is deplorable or the process of the arrest, I have to say, is deplorable. Khalil and others, I feel like if Colombia had taken charge of managing its own antisemitism, I think that there's a confusion between freedom of speech and the right for students safety to be protected and for education to be protected. And if Columbia University had put those two concepts first within that, yes, of course, protect free speech. But free speech is not licensed to harm students, is not licensed to disrupt the education that people are paying dearly for. So, interestingly, a lot of what Trump has demanded were things recommended by the task, the University Task Force on Antisemitism. And had they paid more attention to what the task force had recommended, perhaps it wouldn't have been in this mess and perhaps these students would not have been plucked off the street in the way that they were. So I think Columbia as a university has a ways to go in reckoning. And I think when professors put politics first as their prime agenda, we're in a position where these rights are forfeited.
Zibby Owens
Wow.
Well, Owen, this book was beautiful. I am really impressed. I appreciate your use of language to describe something that at times feels hard to articulate. So thank you very much and thanks for chatting with me.
Owen Lewis
Thank you so much for having me.
Zibby Owens
My pleasure.
Owen Lewis
Bye. Bye.
Zibby Owens
Bye, bye. 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, ibbeowens and Spread the Word.
Thanks so much.
Oh, and buy the books.
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Totally Booked with Zibby: Episode Summary Featuring Owen Lewis and A Prayer of Six Wings
Episode Title: Owen Lewis, A PRAYER OF SIX WINGS
Release Date: April 25, 2025
Host: Zibby Owens
Guest: Owen Lewis, Author of A Prayer of Six Wings
In this poignant episode of Totally Booked with Zibby, host Zibby Owens welcomes poet and psychiatrist Owen Lewis to discuss his latest poetry collection, A Prayer of Six Wings. The conversation delves deep into the emotional and historical underpinnings of Lewis's work, offering listeners a compelling exploration of trauma, memory, and resilience within the Jewish experience.
Zibby Owens introduces Owen Lewis, highlighting his impressive accolades and professional background:
Timestamp: 03:04
Owen Lewis begins by explaining the profound impact of the events of October 7th on his work. The simultaneous personal and collective trauma experienced during this time serves as the foundation for his poetry collection.
Notable Quote:
“...having a daughter who lives in Israel, two grandchildren, then three now... it felt like the war was not just a distant war, but was really being fought right here in New York.”
— Owen Lewis 03:49
Lewis shares his personal fears and anxieties as a father and grandfather, emphasizing how these emotions permeate his poetry. His close ties to Israel and the broader Jewish community provide a deeply personal lens through which he views the conflict.
Notable Quote:
“These are my cousins... my first poem begins with 'these are my cousins,' reflecting both personal and collective loss.”
— Owen Lewis 03:56
Lewis employs a technique he describes as "poetic journalism," interspersing actual news headlines throughout his poems to create a temporal and emotional timeline of the events. This method serves to juxtapose objective reporting with subjective emotional responses.
Notable Quote:
“I was obsessed with headlines. What now? What now? What's today? So interspersing those headlines... was a way of recording somewhat objectively, but subjectively.”
— Owen Lewis 08:48
Through his verses, Lewis captures the pervasive fear and uncertainty experienced during the conflict. He articulates the struggle to verbalize complex emotions, providing listeners with a visceral understanding of the psychological toll.
Notable Quote:
“You have this short poem called 'Overheard in a New York Restaurant.' It’s like you capture the moment... nobody knows how to get through this time.”
— Zibby Owens 07:31
Zibby Owens and Owen Lewis discuss specific poems from the collection, including poignant scenes that illustrate the intersection of personal grief and collective trauma.
Notable Quote:
“Did you know that 'Hoopoes are the national bird of Israel' and 'the blue and white' represent...?”
— Owen Lewis 13:45
Sample Poem Excerpt:
"A belief in order poem that you wrote. You say a belief in order. My daughter returns to bring music to a stunned country... finally, 'the strings full timber, seeking the autumn garden's blue muscari...'"
— Zibby Owens reading Owen’s poem 12:53
Owen Lewis discusses how his dual roles as a psychiatrist and poet intertwine, enriching both his clinical work and creative endeavors. His focus on narrative medicine highlights the therapeutic potential of storytelling and creativity in healing.
Notable Quote:
“Listening and words being my vehicle of hearing, of healing and hearing. ... Poetry, creativity comes out of play and that kind of open space where anything is possible.”
— Owen Lewis 23:42
Lewis delves into the complexities of Jewish identity, historical trauma, and the ongoing struggle for coexistence and peace. He emphasizes the importance of recording these experiences through poetry to preserve collective memory and foster understanding.
Notable Quote:
“I think looking a bit to their poetry is also a way... deep listening and poetry is one vehicle into that listening that paves the way for real peace, not just a ceasefire.”
— Owen Lewis 21:11
Zibby Owens concludes the interview by expressing deep appreciation for Owen Lewis's ability to articulate inexpressible emotions through his poetry. She acknowledges the beauty and depth his work brings to understanding complex emotional landscapes.
Notable Quote:
“Thank you very much and thanks for chatting with me.”
— Zibby Owens 27:38
Closing Remark by Owen Lewis:
“Thank you so much for having me.”
— Owen Lewis 27:55
This episode of Totally Booked with Zibby offers a heartfelt and insightful conversation with Owen Lewis, providing listeners with a profound understanding of his poetry and the broader implications of trauma, memory, and identity within the Jewish community. Lewis's integration of personal narrative with historical context through his poetry serves as a testament to the enduring human spirit in the face of adversity.
For more episodes and to join the live studio audience events in NYC, visit zibbyowens.com. Follow Zibby on Instagram @zibbyowens for updates and behind-the-scenes content.