Episode 657

with Shalom Auslander, Simon Shieh, and Kara Jackson

In his memoir Feh, writer Shalom Auslander attempts to escape his biblical upbringing and carve his own path, with a little help from Kafka; poet and former professional Muay Thai fighter Simon Shieh reckons with trauma, masculinity, and the art of healing in his debut collection Master; and singer-songwriter Kara Jackson performs her single "Pawnshop" from her album Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love?, which was recorded live from this year’s Pickathon festival. Plus, host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello hear from our audience about the small, shameful things they grapple with.

Ep. 657: with Shalom Auslander, Simon Shieh, and Kara Jackson

Live Wire with Luke Burbank

Download

Shalom Auslander

Writer and TV Creator

Shalom Auslander was raised in Monsey, New York. Nominated for the Koret Award for writers under thirty-five, he has published articles in Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Tablet magazine, The New Yorker, and has had stories aired on NPR’s “This American Life.” Auslander is the author of the short story collection Beware of God, the memoir Foreskin’s Lament, and the novels Hope: A Tragedy and Mother for Dinner. He is the creator of Showtime’s “Happyish.” Website

Simon Shieh

Poet and Former Muay Thai Fighter

Simon Shieh is a Taiwanese American poet and essayist and the author of Master (Sarabande, 2023), which was the winner of the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber Award and the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, as well as a finalist for the 2024 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He has lived in upstate New York and Beijing, China, where he co-founded Spittoon Literary Magazine, which translates the best new Chinese writing into English. From 2008-2014, he competed as an amateur and professional Muay Thai fighter in China, Brazil, Argentina, Thailand, and the U.S. Simon's work has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. Website • Instagram

Kara Jackson

Indie-Folk Singer-Songwriter

Kara Jackson is an award-winning poet, singer-songwriter, and producer from Oak Park, Illinois (Chicago). She is the 2019 National Youth Poet Laureate, and Youth Poet Laureate of Chicago (2018). She released her debut album Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? in April of 2023. Kara is also the author of the poetry book Bloodstone Cowboy. Her music and writing are inspired by the American South, as well as her experiences growing up in Chicago. Kara’s new album has garnered support from the likes of Pitchfork, NPR, CRACK Magazine, Rolling Stone, The Needle Drop, Pigeons & Planes, and more. Photo is by Heather Binns. Website • Instagram

Show Notes

Best News

• Elena’s story: “First salmon since 1912 spotted in Oregon’s Klamath Basin months after dam removal”

• Luke’s story: “Overdue Paterson library book returned 101 years and 8 months later”

Shalom Auslander

• Shalom’s new memoir: FEH: A Memoir

  Shalom’s 2008 memoir: FORESKIN'S LAMENT: A Memoir

• He is the creator of Showtime's Happyish.

• Shalom defines "feh” as a Yiddish term expressing disgust, which he often heard growing up. His memoir uses this term to encapsulate his feelings toward the constant judgment that he experienced in his ultra-Orthodox upbringing.

• Early religious teachings shaped Shalom’s perception of himself as inherently flawed, a message he calls “The Big Book of You Suck.”

Simon Shieh

• Simon’s debut poetry collection: Master

• Simon reads a poem from Master titled “Record,” which presents visceral memories of his Muay Thai fights. This raw reflection combines scenes of physical intensity with his underlying vulnerability.

• Simon opens up about how he was drawn to karate as a child, attracted to the discipline, structure, and physical intensity. He shares that, as a sensitive young boy, he felt pressured to prove himself within traditional masculine norms, which ultimately led him to pursue Muay Thai with a fierce dedication.

Station Location Identification Examination (SLIE)

• This week’s station shoutout goes to KYPM-FM in Livingston, Montana.

Kara Jackson

• Listen to Kara’s new album: Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love?

• She performs a song off the album called "Pawnshop.”

• Kara Jackson was named the U.S. Youth Poet Laureate in 2019.

• Full Transcript

  Luke Burbank: This episode of Live Wire was originally recorded in November of 2024. We hope you enjoy it. Now, let's get to the show. 

  Elena Passarello: From PRX, It's... Live Wire! This week, writer Shalom Auslander. 

  Shalom Auslander: God is great, and God's perfect, and then one day he makes a man, and things go so downhill so quickly that he spends a lot of the first book trying to get rid of us. 

  Elena Passarello: Poet Simon Shieh. 

  Simon Shieh: I know a lot of athlete poets and I think there are quite a few crossovers between athletics and poetry. I think that poetry is not an intellectual activity, I think it's a bodily activity. 

  Elena Passarello: With music from Kara Jackson and our fabulous house band. I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello, and now the host of Live Wire, Luke Burbank. 

  Luke Burbank: Hey, thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Thanks to everyone who is tuning in from all over these great United States. We have a great show in store for you this week. We'll be talking to all kinds of interesting folks who are doing interesting things. First though, of course, we've gotta kick things off like we always do. With the best news we heard all week. This right here is our little reminder, the top of the show. There's good news happening out there in the world. Elena, what's the best news that you heard all week? 

  Elena Passarello: Oh, OK, so this is great Oregon news, also great California news. And I bet you in my town, which is an Oregon town full of fisher people and wildlife conservation people and scientists. This is what everyone is talking about in every coffee shop and grocery store. There's this dam. There's a series of dams, actually, on the Klamath River, which is the river that kind of runs the border between Oregon and California. And the J.C. Boyle Dam is right over the basin. And it's part of a system that was constructed over a century ago to be used as like a power source, an agricultural reservoir. But eventually, the dam system depleted 90% of the salmon in the Klamath River Basin. Obviously, that had to stop happening. But it took two decades and a lot of lobbying and a lot of tough conversations. But starting in 2022, all of the dams that blocked salmon migration between the basin and the ocean. have been removed. This was the largest dam removal project in U.S. history, cost half a billion dollars, and now all 400 miles of the Klamath River is undammed and free for salmon to party up and down it as they are anadromous fish. I just learned that word. 

  Luke Burbank: Please, I know what that means, but for the listeners that aren't familiar with anadromous, can you explain? 

  Elena Passarello: Anadromous fish are those fish that swim from the sea to into freshwater rivers in order to spawn or spend a second part of their lives. So nobody was sure exactly how long it was gonna take the salmon to find their way up into the Klamath River Basin again. The estimates were that it was gonna be until we're like full steam, like five generations of chinook salmon. But guess what? Six weeks after the Klamath was freely flowing in August. A team from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife were in a tributary of the basin and they saw this fin in the water, a real big fin, and they were like, is that a rainbow trout? And it turns out the salmon are already finding their way back, breaking records, surpassing expectations. It's a miracle. It's so exciting. And I encourage everybody to go to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife's website. A sentence I never thought I'd say before. There's underwater video of the salmon, you can tell everybody is super excited. And I just have to say that a significant weight of these efforts these past decades were taken on by Native American biologists and politicians and fishermen whose communities were affected by the dams and for whom Chinook salmon hold a real cultural significance. One member of the Klamath Tribes Council called them culture carriers. And Roberta Frost, the secretary of the Klamath Tribes said, they are just like tribal people. and they know where home is, and they returned as soon as they were able, the salmon have remembered. 

  Luke Burbank: I mean, I don't think that you can view this through any other lens. Um, my best news story, uh, comes from Denver, Colorado, where a woman named Cindy Delhaie was going through some old boxes. She was doing some decluttering like we all probably should. Some of us are not though. Some of us are me. And as Cindy was going through this box of books, she found that there was a copy of the book Shakespeare's life of King Henry the fifth, and it didn't look like all the other books in the box because it was in fact a library book. She opened it and realized this book was like overdue, um, but not like a little bit overdue it was supposed to be returned. In February of 1923 to the Paterson New Jersey Public Library. 

  Elena Passarello: A hundred and one years ago. 

  Luke Burbank: Yeah, but who's counting, right? She had gotten this box of books years ago from her grandmother. Now, we don't necessarily think that Arlene Delhaie, the grandmother, was the one who checked out this book. Because she would have been basically a three-year-old who was checking out a Henry V book, which maybe she was super precocious. But the theory is that it might have been another woman named Lillian L. Burns checked the book out from the Patterson Library, but then somehow at some point gifted it. to Arlene Delhaie and it just stayed with her all these years and then went into this box and then went to her granddaughter in Denver who eventually uncovered it. And so Cindy was like is there even still this particular public library in Patterson, New Jersey? Turns out it's still there. They were very excited to get the book back all these years later. This is not even the oldest library book that's been returned lately, sort of globally. There was a Poetry of Byron book that was returned in Cumbria, England that was 113 years overdue. Oh my gosh. There was a copy of Ivanhoe that was 105 years overdue to a Colorado library. Wait. 

  Elena Passarello: Wait, did Byron check out his own book? I think it was a little weird. He was trying to goose the numbers. He was trying to goose the numbers. 

  Luke Burbank: He was like, nobody's trying to see if I can get a little interest going around this. Anyway, of course, the book was not just pushed back through the slot into the library in Paterson. It was mailed back very carefully. The library is very excited to have the book back. They are not going to just return it to the shelves, but they're going to kind of display it. It's cool that the library is getting this extra attention. We know our libraries always need more support. And this is the good news. They have agreed to waive the late fee, which would have been at 10 cents a day for overdue books. $3,686.50. They will not be charging Cindy Delhay or the estate of Arlene Delhay that money. Old books being reunited with the Patterson Public Library is the best news I heard all week. All right, let's get to our first guest. He is the author of several books, including the memoir, Foreskin’s Lament. Just let that sink in for a minute. He's also the creator of Showtime's Happy-ish. His writing has been featured in the New York Times, The New Yorker, and On This American Life. His new memoir is titled Feh, and it's about unlearning an old story and rewriting a new one for both him and his family. His work has been described as relentlessly funny, subversively heartfelt and fearlessly provocative. We found him to be all three when we interviewed Shalom Auslander at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton, Oregon. Take a listen to this. Hello Shalom, hello, welcome to the show. I enjoyed this book so much. I get the sense you've been hearing this a lot, that I saw a lot of myself in your experience that you described from your life, but can we just kind of start at the beginning, can you please explain what fa is and can you use it in a sentence? 

  Shalom Auslander: Um, yeah, the sentence would be Shalom, you're being fat. It's a Yiddish term that I heard a lot growing up. I was raised ultra-orthodox, and it just denotes complete and utter disgust in someone or something, usually me. And so the idea that I'm kind of horrible was implanted in a very, very early age. And then it was sort of confirmed by all the stories in the Old Testament. which is, I refer to in the book as the big book of You Suck. Because it's, that's kind of what it is. It's like every story is God is great and you suck. And, you know, I'll be honest, it doesn't, it's not something that it's easy to get rid of. 

  Luke Burbank: I wonder about that reading the book because it does seem so you're you're kind of the way that you are hard on yourself in this book is so thorough. 

  Shalom Auslander: They did a good job. 

  Luke Burbank: Well, yeah, I mean, it made me want to kind of come in and give you a hug sometimes. You and I, I think, I've had people say this to me, which you mentioned your wife, Orly, saying this to you at some point, saying, I wish you could see me the way I see you. That's what she says to you. And I've had people say that to me, and why does that not work? Why is that an impossibility? 

  Shalom Auslander: Because, at least in my case, we're blinded, we can't see. The book starts with the day of my blinding began like anything else, and it was just the first day in Yeshiva, a religious school. But from the very beginning, you're told to see yourself in a certain way. And that doesn't go away, right? So what sort of caused me to start writing the book and thinking about this kind of stuff is that story. which is more than just a little tale we tell each other. According to most neuroscientists and people who research this stuff, story is our operating system, is the human operating system. It's how we relate to each other, it's why we're doing this ridiculous thing. We sit around and we tell stories. And that's how we remember, it's how we raise our kids, it's everything, it's culture, it's information. For some reason, we've been telling a story to ourselves for thousands of years where we're the antagonist. We're the bad guy, right, always. And I say that as a Jew. 

  Elena Passarello: But you're saying the Old Testament and other books like it put humans in this kind of role where they're the villains. Yeah. 

  Shalom Auslander: I mean, look, God is great and God's perfect. And then one day he makes a man and things go so downhill so quickly that he spends a lot of the first book trying to get rid of us. So he makes us, and the first thing my great, great, great grandfather did was steal. He stole an apple. God gets pissed off, kicks him and his wife out. They have kids. One kills the other. Then God says, screw all this. I'm flooding the whole damn place. It's just one horrible thing after the next. And so, if you're thinking human being... You're going, wait a minute, that's me they're talking about. I'm the bad guy. When any, I think if you took, I've written about this in a previous book. If you took the Old Testament, New Testament, Quran, all of it and you swapped out the name God, you did a fine change and you changed God to Fred. And then you read it to any five year old and ask them who's the bad guy. They would say Fred. 

  Luke Burbank: Yeah. 

  Shalom Auslander: And yet we teach it as if that's someone we should aspire to be like. We should not be trying to be like God. 

  Luke Burbank: Yeah, you have this really great device in the book of kind of thinking about God watching the sitcom that is your life. And at certain points being, oh, this strains credulity, or like they expect me to buy this. You know, it's like an interesting way to look at it. I want to talk to you after the break about why you probably shouldn't try to use videotape cleaner as a mood enhancer, no matter how good it makes you feel. We're talking to Shalom Auslander. His latest book is Feh, this is Livewire, more in just a moment. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. We're at the Patricia Reser Center for the Performing Arts in Beaverton, Oregon. This week we're talking to Shalom Auslander about his latest book, Feh. It's a memoir. The book kind of starts out with you in the hospital doing very poorly and no one can figure out why because you will not admit that it's because you were taking some weird off-brand diet stuff. 

  Shalom Auslander: It's not off-brand, it's like some research chemical. 

  Luke Burbank: Yeah, what was it and what impact did it have on you? Did you look incredibly hot afterwards? Did it work? 

  Shalom Auslander: You said earlier you wanted to give me a hug, but part of the book is that every time my wife hugs me, all I can think is she thinks I'm fat. And it's because there's this constant, endless judgment that goes on. So among other things, that was one of the results, was that I talk a little bit about for me, hell is a giant pool surrounded by mirrors, and you're not allowed to wear a T-shirt. Yeah, yeah. You're there for eternity. And so I've always been sort of hating on what I look like, so I was trying to find something to fix it. So in the early days of the internet, I'd heard about this thing that seemed to be working in rats. And I'm like, how come rats always get the good stuff? Look how hot that rat is. It is. This rat had abs, and even though there was like a skull and crossbones on it and it said not for human consumption, I was like, yeah, but that's the good stuff, that's how you know it works. You know, that must be the good stuff. Heroin doesn't come with it saying, shoot this, it's like, no, don't, yeah. So I took it and it shut down my pancreas and I found myself in the ER and they hooked me up. to wires and tubes and they said they're gonna have to shut down my whole system for a week. No food, no water, no nothing to try and get it to start again, to stop eating itself. The irony is that because of that, I lost about 10 pounds. So it kind of worked, right? 

  Luke Burbank: But just so I understand this, your shame around having taken this thing was greater than your fear that you might die from it, because you're not telling the doctor what's actually wrong with you. So you're endangering your own life because you're too mortified to admit to what you've done. 

  Shalom Auslander: Right, so I took something because of shame, that I was afraid of shame to admit I had taken. But that's the cycle. I mean, that's when it's, look, it's intense. It's not, I laugh at things because that's my way of dealing with it. But that doesn't mean they're necessarily funny. To me, the sort of high bar in writing for myself or anybody, or film or whatever, is ha ha ha ouch. where, and that's why I decided to write. I found Kafka, I found Beckett, Vonnegut, Flannery O'Connor, they all seemed to be doing ha ha ha ouch and I was like, I think I can do that. If I just lose 10 pounds.  

  Luke Burbank: Yeah. That was what was holding you back. 

  Shalom Auslander: Yeah, I mean, this is the thing. I don't think people get this, because I've spoken to a lot of addicts and I've been around people who've had these problems in their lives, and there's always this thing of like, oh, you just wanna get high, right? I don't think most addicts wanna get high. I think they wanna get normal. They're low, right? And so interesting, Freud used to have this thing where he said that his whole project was not to make people happy. it was to bring them up to a normal level of misery. Which he did very well, some more than others. But that's what it is, it's not like I was sitting there going, everything's great, I'd like to be even greater. It's like you walk around and you see people who seem okay with themselves. They seem happy, they seem, they're laughing, they're with people and everything's good. You're like, what do I gotta do to get to that? Because I feel like crap. And what I realized through Thanks for watching! Writing the book and meeting some people who are also really fed in their lives was that I was either going to have to succumb to it or rewrite the story. Because that's the only way you fight back against the story is with another story. And so part of the book is about me trying to rewrite the stories I was told. And not in a, hey, you're wonderful, Instagram-y, you know, crochet pillow kind of thing, but in a way that I can accept that is just less. 

  Luke Burbank: Did it have the desired effect 

  Shalom Auslander: You know, it does, it's interesting. I don't think writing in general is curative. If it was, then everyone would have one book. But I think it's therapeutic. 

  Luke Burbank: Elena has like four books. So it's clearly not working. 

  Elena Passarello: It's only getting worse 

  Shalom Auslander: Yeah, that's also what happens. Yeah, you just go down the rabbit hole. 

  Elena Passarello: Basically, I'm on the floor stripper of books, I think. 

  Shalom Auslander: And so you keep needing that therapy. So it makes you feel better in the moment. One of the stories I end up with, and I've been doing this sort of video project along at the same time, is what if somewhere along the line, I don't know how, whatever, the story got mixed up, and God is really the antagonist, and we're the hero. And what happens if you take that prism and you read the entire Old Testament, New Testament, everything through that prism? What happens is it's actually a really great book. It's like, hey kids, we're gonna read the first chapter. And the first chapter is in Don't Steal from God, You Thieving Little Piece of Crap. If someone steals an apple from you, calm down. It's not a big deal. It's an apple. get over it. Take a beat. It literally grows back. It's going to be more of them. It actually grows on trees. Yeah. They're all over the floor. And so it becomes this thing of like, how do you teach your kids? Oh, don't fly off the handle. Don't get angry. Oh, you know what? God tried to, you know, they were building a tower and he was so angry the tower was big that he mixed up all their languages. It's like, so they're building a tower. It's a tower. They're not going to reach you, you're God. It's just like, and the thought that always ends it is, don't be like God, you're better than that. 

  Shalom Auslander: You know what I mean?  

  Luke Burbank: Yeah. This is Live Wire from PRX, the show that tells you, don't be like God, talking to Shalom Auslander about his latest book, Feh. You write about your family a lot in this book and it seems like, at least at the time of writing, that your kids were pretty unfair. Yeah. How did you break the cycle? 

  Shalom Auslander: I'm just fantastic. Next question. Um, I, I don't know, I mean, it was, I think, I think if you're gonna have children, okay, this is another lesson from God, right? Don't be like God and have kids and then resent who they are, right? Just love them unconditionally. They're your kids. You don't need to go change them. You don't need to make them wear funny hats and pray to you all day long. They're just kids. They do things. They mess around. They make slime and it gets on the couch. They're kids, love them, just love them for who they are and everything will be fine. 

  Elena Passarello: Want kids. 

  Shalom Auslander: Want the kids you have. 

  Elena Passarello: It's like a great plan. [Shalom: Yeah.] And read a lot of Kafka. 

  Shalom Auslander: Read a lot of Kafka. Kafka's everything. Kafka's the funniest writer who ever lived. He is funny. Yeah. No, and the problem is that, like, you go to college and they tell you he's not. I was lucky I didn't go to college. 

  Luke Burbank: Oh yeah, I forgot that, that's interesting. You're somebody who's obviously a great writer and you're a big reader, but college was not that appealing to you. 

  Shalom Auslander: I wasn't appealing at all. First of all, I was in a point in my life where I just needed to leave home and get a job and just get out of the world I was in. But I didn't have a whole lot of respect for authority to begin with. So I mean, God never really got along. He runs a tight ship. But I found a used bookstore. And the first time I walked in, I asked the guy, would I ask every... bookstore owner when I walk in, which is What's Funny? And he gave me this book by Kafka, who I'd never heard of before. But then I read this book, and I'm like, what's funny? And he said, well, it's about a guy who wakes up and he's a bug, and I'm like, what's funny about that? And he's like, well, his family hates him for it. I'm like, that's not funny, that's my life. 

  Shalom Auslander: And the real funny part, when you read it, is not only do they hate him for it and not help at all in his pain, they're happy when he dies. The end. If you know of a funnier story than that, I would like to hear it. What Milan Candaro identified, I think, what Kafka really does, and he said, what Kafka does is he goes into the dark depths of a joke. So he starts with a joke, you know, a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar. And, but then he takes it really seriously and they become full fledged characters and with full emotion. And what, what now? Right. And I feel like, I think that appeals to me because I think that's life. Life's a joke. that we have to take seriously. 

  Elena Passarello: while we're here. 

  Shalom Auslander: Yeah, while we're here, we got to take it seriously and stuff hurts, but that's what it is. Ultimately, it makes no sense. It's ridiculous. We're nothing, then we're here for a minute. We drink some videotape cleaner and we're done. Who wouldn't? 

  Luke Burbank: Given that joke. Shalom, Auslander, everyone. The book is Feh. That was writer Shalom Auslander right here on LiveWire. His latest book, Feh, a Memoir, is out right now. This is Live Wire, I'm Luke Burbank, that's Elena Passarello. Of course, each week on the show, we ask our audience a question. And now, inspired by Shalom Auslander's book where he talks so much about shame and reclaiming his life from shame, we decided to ask our audience a question. What is something you used to be ashamed of but it doesn't bother you anymore? We thought we would do something fun this week. We actually sent our producer, Melanie Sevcenko, out to interview people that were at our live taping at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts. And this is their response to that question. This is me and Elena hearing this for the very first time. Let's start off with a band that we love here on Live Wire. It's the Fine Folks from Tropa Májica. This is David from Tropa Magica. 

  David (Tropa Magica): I guess, as a performer, such as the faces I make while I'm singing, I don't realize that I'm making a forced face, but it's because I'm spinning around, running around, so I'm catching my breath and singing, so I make these funny faces. Some people might not care about it because they're like, yeah, he's feeling it, but to me, I'm like, oh, dang, I see it later. 

  Luke Burbank: I know that feeling, not because I can rock out like the folks in Tropa Magica, but because I am so self-obsessed that I assume people are noticing stuff about me and giving it the least generous read. But people usually aren't. A, they're mostly obsessed with themselves, and two, they probably think that you're just making a cool guitar face on stage. 

  Elena Passarello: That's right. And have you ever seen the band Heim, their amazing founder and bassist? She's just like makes all these crazy faces. And she's just owning it, too. She sells merchandise that says Bass Face and has her picture on it and stuff like that. So I'm glad. I'm glad that we're loving the funk when the funk gets in the face. 

  Luke Burbank: All right, how about Ezra? This is something Ezra, who was at the show, was insecure about, but is now making some peace with. 

  Ezra: When I have a typo in an email that's just like one off random thing, it doesn't matter, but I'm so embarrassed about it every time. 

  Luke Burbank: Okay. I don't know if Ezra has gotten to the point of total acceptance. It sounds like Ezra is still stuck on the embarrassed part. 

  Elena Passarello: Well, listen to this. There is a typo carved into the Lincoln Memorial. And nobody has fixed it. And so if our nation is cool with a stone typo in the memorial to one of our greatest presidents, you should be totally fine accidentally writing goon instead of good. 

  Luke Burbank: All right one last one this is from Penny this an insecurity the penny has that i'd do believe has actually now turned into a string 

  Penny: So one thing that I'm very, very insecure about, and I feel a great deal of shame about actually, is that I am a plan canceler. I am the friend who like, if we make plans, you pretty much know, if you know me, that there's like a good one in two chance that I might drop out. And I feel all this embarrassment about it, but then one day I imagined all my friends who love me at my funeral. And someone making a joke about how, like, maybe Penny won't show up today, and then I decided that maybe it doesn't matter, like, it's not that big of a deal, and it's just kind of like, your friends will love you anyway, and maybe, and also everyone loves getting free time at the last minute. Like, who doesn't like, like, oh, I get to knock on today? Like, everyone enjoys that. 

  Elena Passarello: Oh my god, every time someone cancels plans, I'm like, thank you, Lord! 

  Luke Burbank: As long as you have waited long enough that you aren't the one that has to cancel. I mean, the perfect crime is when someone cancels plans on you that you were low key hoping you could cancel. And then you get to just be like, all right, well, I'll hope to see you soon. Rain check, I guess. I mean, I really think the greatest gift we can give each other is to cancel the plans. 

  Elena Passarello: Also, I'm going to take Penny's advice in everything that I think is annoying about myself. I'm just going to imagine people warmly chuckling about it at my funeral, so like, what a slob. 

  Luke Burbank: Alright, thanks to everybody who responded to our listener question. You are listening to Live Wire from PRX, now our next guest is an award winning poet who can say things with his mind, but also his body as a former professional Muay Thai fighter. His first collection of poetry is titled Master and it grapples with questions of power and masculinity and trauma, Publishers Weekly calls it an extraordinary investigation of a painful past. Simon Shieh joined us at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton, Oregon to talk about it. Take a listen to this. Simon, welcome to Live Wire. Thank you, Luke. Let's kind of start this conversation at the end of this book of poetry of yours. In the notes you write, these poems are not about what happened to me. They are about the process of writing what happened to me. What do you mean by that exactly? 

  Simon Shieh: Yeah, that's a good question. And I love how people read the notes, because as I was writing the poems in this book, I realized that I was not writing autobiographically, I was writing poetically. And that was really important to me because I tried to write this book as a memoir, as an autobiography, and it wasn't coming out the way I wanted it. The magic wasn't there. cut out most of the autobiography and replaced it with poetry, with imagination, it spoke to me more. So, I guess that's just to say that writing this book kind of taught me how to think about what I went through and about myself, and this book is a record of that. It's not really a record of what happened to me. 

  Luke Burbank: You you'd say in the book that Before you wrote this book you were writing poems about the beautiful dark forests of America and smoke. What what caused you to change up what you're writing about? 

  Simon Shieh: Yeah, I'm fascinated by the way writers treat their subject matter when it's autobiographical and how they can displace kind of feelings and even events and kind of conjure images that have nothing to do with those events, but that make the reader feel the same way that the writer felt going through those things. But I feel like if I had just given the reader, you know, kind of a factual narrative, if it wouldn't have conveyed. those feelings as strongly because those feelings are really rooted in helplessness, vulnerability. So images like smoke and fire or images that I guess have nothing to do with what really happened sometimes serve my purposes better. 

  Luke Burbank: Can you read a poem from the book, actually? 

  Simon Shieh: I'd love to, yeah, I'll read, I'll read record. In violence, there is no reciprocity, like rain on soil. Shanghai, 18 years old, winner by knockout. The doctor called a stop to the fight when he noticed part of the skull exposed next to his eyebrow, a piece no bigger than an eye. Thailand, 19 years old, winner by knockout. My lower lip gushing, I drop him with an uppercut as his queen looks on, her lips bright red, her mouth curled into a smile. Brazil, 20 years old, loser by knockout. One night before, hoodie drenched in sweat, 10 pounds in two hours, then newspapers soaked through with grease, endless slices of watermelon at the Churrascaria. Then his knee shattering the bone around my left eye. The doctors called it orbital. My mistake resting my head on his shoulder, letting him cradle it in his arms. And to think all those years and not a moment of pain. 

  Luke Burbank: That is Simon Shieh reading from his book of poetry Master here on Live Wire. I'm curious what, you were a very competitive mixed martial artist fighting Muay Thai. What was appealing about that for you? It seems just like so brutal and scary to be a part of. And that poem, by the way, isn't dissuading me from that notion. 

  Simon Shieh: So I got into Muay Thai through karate, I did karate as a child. I was really drawn to the, I guess very rigid culture and structure of, hierarchical structure in the karate school where there was a clear, you know, master figure that I would bow down to and he was the authority. I was also very attracted to the violence, the spectacle, because I felt... as a child very sensitive myself. Looking back, I think what I was doing was I was punishing myself for being such a sensitive boy because I looked around me and I saw, you know, boys, men that were not like me, that were not, didn't at least present as sensitive. And I felt like it was wrong for me to be this, you know, quiet, shy, sensitive boy. So I think that I put myself in those situations because I wanted to prove something to myself. And, um... That's how I got started with Muay Thai. [Luke: What do you think made you good at it?] I think I was really determined and disciplined. And I think that I was trying to heal a wound in myself. And I think that that's often the source of a lot of great achievement is this trying to fix something. And I was definitely trying to fix something. I say that when I was trying to punch someone else in Muay That was actually. punching myself, which is funny, but it's also not funny. But I think it's true. 

  Luke Burbank: We're talking to Simon Shieh. His new collection of poetry is called Master. This is Live Wire from PRX. Is there a connection between mixed martial arts and poetry? They seem like wildly different endeavors. 

  Simon Shieh: Yeah, they are. And I don't know many mixed martial arts poets. I know a lot of athlete poets. And I think there are quite a few crossovers between athletics and poetry. I think that poetry is not an intellectual activity. I think it's a bodily activity. And so I think that's kind of the intersection of athletics and poetry. I need to feel the poem in my body. And if I don't, then I know it's not working. and I'll often write when I'm moving, like physically moving my body. So usually I'm walking, writing in my notes app. Very seldom am I telling myself I'm gonna sit down and write something and then I write. I usually have all this material and then I sit down and I kind of bring the material together on the computer but most of the generation, generating the work, comes when I'm moving around. So there's a few intersections I think. 

  Elena Passarello: Did you do the two at the same time ever, or are those two different parts of your life? 

  Simon Shieh: I never did them at the same time. I wrote some poems when I was a teenager, but just very sporadically and in kind of fits and bursts, but they're very separate. And when I started writing poetry, it's because I had decided to quit fighting. And it was kind of a conscious decision on my part because I needed to choose one or the other, either fighting or something else. It happened to be poetry. But when I started writing, I couldn't write about. fighting. It took me a long time to figure out how to write about my experience as a fighter. And I think because it was so kind of close to me and because fighting is a difficult thing to put language to anyway. But yeah, they were they've always been very separate for me. 

  Luke Burbank: I know this is not what it's about, but could you probably kick any other poet's ass? Right. Definitely. Looking at you, Billy Collins. Only this crowd would go for a Billy Collins joke. Poor Billy. I wanna be careful that I'm not making light of the content of the book, which again, is very serious and you are processing a time in your life. Did the writing of this help you process that? Do you feel differently about that time in your life now with this book having been created than you did before? 

  Simon Shieh: I do. I think I don't like to kind of jump to this idea that writing is catharsis because I think that that's maybe too easy and too simple, but writing it helped me understand kind of who I was better as a child and why I made the decisions that I made. Because even though this book is about a master figure who was manipulative, misogynistic. who was a terrible mentor, but also wanted to be a mentor. You probably know the type. Even though it's about this figure, it's actually about me. And it's about kind of why I was so attracted to that as a child and what kind of drew me into his allure. So writing this book helped me understand that about myself more. Yeah, well, it's a really, really beautiful. 

  Luke Burbank: Simon, thanks for doing it. The book is Master. Simon Shieh here on Live Wire, everybody. That was Simon Shieh right here on Live Wire. Make sure you check out his book, Master. It's really incredible and it is out now. It's Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. We have to take a very quick break, but do not go anywhere. When we come back, we are gonna hear some music from singer, songwriter, Kara Jackson, and we're gonna find out why her music should not just be reduced to sad indie when it comes to the streaming services. It will all make sense in a moment, stay with us, this is Live Wire. Welcome back to LiveWire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. All right. It's what is possibly my favorite part of the show when we play a little station location, identification, examination. This is where I get to quiz our incredible announcer, Elena Passarello, about a place in the United States where Live Wire is on the radio. Elena has to guess where I am talking about. This city is, it's small but mighty, and it's got a number of popular tourist attractions. It's got a restored rail station with a railroad museum that was built in 1902. It's home to the International Fly Fishing Federation's Museum. Cool. So fly fishing, what does that start to kind of locate you towards? 

  Elena Passarello: Well, that Brad Pitt movie was set in Montana, I think. 

  Luke Burbank: That's my number one reference point for fly-fishing to is a river running through it Speaking of films there have been a number of films that are shot in this place in Montana The horse whisperer in 1998 and then everybody's favorite from 2015 Cowboys versus dinosaurs 

  Elena Passarello: I only know a few names of towns in Montana. 

  Luke Burbank: It is a town, I'm told, that is mentioned in a Jimmy Buffett song. Oh! You can hear the music playin', you can hear the fiddler saw, everybody's raisin' hell up and down these streets. 

  Elena Passarello: Is it Margaritaville, Montana? 

  Luke Burbank: I mean, from your lips to Jimmy Buffett's ears, maybe someday, rest in peace, but no, for now, we know it as Livingston, Montana, where we are on the radio on KYPM.FM. So shout out to everybody there in Livingston. Before we get to our musical guest, a little preview of what we are doing next week on the show, we're going to be talking to the poet Morgan Parker about her first collection of essays. It's called, You Get What You Pay For. It reflects on the difficulty and also the beauty of existing in the world as a black woman and thinking about American history. Then we're gonna chat with an athlete turned author. It's Georgia Cloepfil, talking about her book, The Striker and the Clock, which is a memoir about her life as a professional soccer player. Then we're gonna round out the hour with some gorgeous music from Latin Grammy nominated Brazilian artist, Rogê. He has released a slew of solo records and even helped write the theme for the 2016 Olympics in Rio That's all coming up next week on the show In the meantime, you are tuned to live wire from PRX our musical guest this week has a background in poetry To say the least in fact, she was named the US youth poet laureate and you can really hear it in her songs, which we got to hear at this year's Pickathon Music Festival. In case you're not familiar with Pickathon, it's a four day experiential music festival that brings talent from around the world to Happy Valley, Oregon. So take a listen to this. It's a conversation and a performance from Kara Jackson recorded at the Lucky Barn at Pickathon. Something I've read about you is you're from Chicago, but you feel a really strong connection to the South by way of your elders. How has that kind of informed your music and just how you think about life? 

  Kara Jackson: Yeah, it's definitely really a big influence for me, just like my family. I'm very close with everyone in my family. And I grew up in Chicago, but I have spent my time going to Georgia, like, since I was an infant and seeing my grandparents and stuff. My dad's from, like, a really tiny town in Georgia called Dawson. Before I knew, like, poetry in a formal way, I think the way that my family is and, like, Southern idioms and just the way that you know old people talk like it can be very poetic I think my grandparents are just really witty people and my parents as well So I just kind of grew up with their wit and their stories and that really I think gave me an affinity for like storytelling in general 

  Luke Burbank: I feel like there's so much humor in your music, and yet I've been listening to so much of your music lately that the Spotify is now telling me other channels I might like, and one of them was just Sad Indie, which I feel was very reductive of what you're doing. 

  Kara Jackson: Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, of course, like folk and blues are like, you know, cousins, and there's kind of an association with, you know, like, girl playing the guitar equals sad, but I think that, I mean, even someone like Joni Mitchell, who was so confessional and like, you know, honest and raw about her life and her feelings. There's so much wit there and also cleverness that I think sometimes gets lost when you kind of reduce women to their sadness. And even, I've always loved Fiona Apple. And I think there's kind of a, like Mitski talks about this, the word confessional and diaristic being subscribes to women artists and how that kind of robs us of our. roles as literary people and as actual writers and people who are working on a craft. I think that folk music is such a complex and deep genre with so much history. And I think there's so many layers to it. I also approach life with humor. I think it helps me cope with the bigger, larger, harder things in life. So yeah, I try to sprinkle something in there. 

  Luke Burbank: It's coming through, even if the Spotify algorithm is missing it, but without further ado, Kara Jackson. 

  Kara Jackson: This next one is a song called Pawnshop. And I wrote this song thinking about secondhand shopping. So I think about shopping a lot. I'm a Libra, so I'm very guilty of shopping too much. But I was thinking about the way that love is kind of like shopping in a secondhand store. You know. Digging through trash, trying to make treasure out of it. but I think also sometimes you can kind of feel like you're being handed off to the Salvation Army or something. You know, when you think you have a good thing going and it's like, no, I'm in the giveaway pile. Yeah, I think love can kind of feel like that sometimes, but as a second hand shopper, I also feel like it can be pretty awesome when you find something really great. So stress is secondhand. So, you know, retail value is important. This is Pawnshop. 

  Kara Jackson: Kara Jackson performs "Pawnshop". 

  Luke Burbank: That was Kara Jackson right here on Live Wire performing a song called Pawnshop from her critically acclaimed album, Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? That performance was recorded at the Lucky Barn as part of this year's Pickathon 2024 music festival. You want to learn more about Pickathon, go to their website pickathon.com or check them out on Instagram. That's going to do it for another fun-filled and eventful episode of Live Wire. A huge thanks to our guests, Shalom Auslander, Simon Shieh, and Kara Jackson. 

  Elena Passarello: Laura Hadden is our executive producer. Heather de Michele is our executive director and our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Eben Hoffer is our technical director. Leona Kinderman is our assistant technical director. And our house sound is by Nate Zwainlesk. Ashley Park is our production fellow and Becky Phillips and Andrea Castro-Martinez are our interns. 

  Luke Burbank: Our house band is Sam Pinkerton, Ethan Fox Tucker, Ayal Alves, and A. Walker-Spring, who also composes our music. This episode was mixed by Eben Hoffer and Molly Pettit. Special thanks this week to Jason Powers and the fine folks at Sarabande Books! 

  Elena Passarello: Additional funding provided by the Oregon Arts Commission, a state agency funded by the state of Oregon and the National Endowment for the Arts. Live Wire was created by Robyn Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week, we'd like to thank member Jennifer Forman of Portland, Oregon, and Martha Stiven of Lake Oswego, Oregon. 

  Luke Burbank: For more information about the show or how you can listen to our podcast, visit LiveWireRadio.org. I am Luke Burbank for Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire team. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.

  PRX.