Episode 10: Words Make Worlds

Pause, Purpose, Possibility

This episode will drop one day after the annual holiday honoring the life and legacy of the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr…. and some three months into the horrific war between Israel and Hamas in the Middle East, not to mention the ongoing war in Ukraine, and deepening political divisions in this country. King managed to see beyond violence and hatred; his words and his life heralded the possibility of a different kind of world, and more just and life-giving way of being. In my far-reaching conversation this week with my guest Jeremy Schraffenberger, we talk about (among other things) how words make worlds, and about whether it’s possible to do our work, to live our lives, in ways that people will stop killing each other. We also talk about the Beetles, music as a means of gathering community, and about the malleability of memory in being human.

Jeremy Schraffenberger is editor of North American Review – the oldest literary magazine in the country, dating back to 1815, and a professor of English at the University of Northern Iowa, where he has taught for fifteen years. He is the author of two books of poems, Saint Joe's Passion and The Waxen Poor, and the forthcoming chapbook American Sad. In addition to writing, he says he strives for mediocrity when playing piano in a local band called The Favorites. He believes in radical mystery and the transformative experience of making and engaging with art. He lives in Cedar Falls, Iowa, with his wife, the novelist Adrianne Finaly, and their two young daughters.