Ep. 209 A Poem is About Wonder with Nate Marshall

Written By Megan Caballero

In this episode we speak with the lauded writer, educator and MC Nate Marshall, whose latest poetry collection Finna was named one of NPR's best books of 2020. We discuss poetry's early-2000s pop culture heyday, its evolving cultural voice and our first introductions to the oft-intimidating, wonder-evoking art form.

The Stacks Book Club selection for April is Doppelgangbanger by Cortney Lamar Charleston. We will discuss the book on April 27th with Nate Marshall.

 
 

Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon

To support The Stacks and find out more from this week’s sponsors, click here.

Connect with Nate: Twitter | Instagram | Website
Connect with The Stacks: Instagram | Twitter | Shop | Patreon | Goodreads | Substack | Subscribe

To contribute to The Stacks, join The Stacks Pack, and get exclusive perks, check out our Patreon page. If you prefer to support the show with a one time contribution go to paypal.me/thestackspod.

The Stacks participates in affiliate programs. We receive a small commission when products are purchased through links on this website.

TRANSCRIPT
*Due to the nature of podcast advertising, these timestamps are not 100% accurate and will vary.

Traci Thomas 0:08
Welcome to The Stacks a podcast about books and the people who read them. I’m your host Traci Thomas. April is National Poetry Month and to celebrate we brought poet playwright and Professor Nate Marshall to the stacks. Nate is the poet behind the poetry collection wild hundreds and the critically acclaimed Finna. Today we talked about poetry is a cool factor, the idea of a first poet and the issues with recommending a book to the current president of the United States. Nate also gives us a preview for our April book club pick, which is Doppelgangbanger by Cortney Lamar Charleston, which we will be discussing on the show on Wednesday, April 27. With Nate Marshall, get excited people. Okay, let’s kick off Poetry Month, right? We’ve got my conversation with Nate Marshall.

All right, everybody. I’m very excited. It is April. It is Poetry Month. It’s the only, you know, month that we celebrate around here. We don’t do black history month. We don’t do Asian American Pacific Islander month. We don’t do snacks are my favorite month. But we do for some reason, do Poetry Month around here. And I am so excited because I am joined by one of the only poet whose work I feel like I understand and like can dig into. I’m joined by the Nate Marshall. Nate, welcome to The Stacks.

Nate Marshall 2:18
Oh, thank you so much. Wow, that’s that’s like high praise.

Traci Thomas 2:22
And as I am famous for being like, I don’t understand poems. What is that idea? But I read Finnell, like last year, and I was like, wow, I get this. And then I just read wild hundreds. And I was like, I get this too. And so now I’m like, I speak Nate’s language. Like, I feel like we’re on the same page. But before we get into your poetry, will you sort of just give people like a little tell them a little bit about yourself?

Nate Marshall 2:49
Yeah, so um, Marshall, I realize I’m gesturing wildly, and no one can see that. So no one can see it. But me hopefully in my voice, you hear my enthusiasm. But um, yeah, I’m a martial. I write poems mostly, and other things. And I’m from Chicago from the Southside of Chicago, which is, I guess the thing everyone who knows me sort of knows about me. And I teach out here at Colorado College. So I’m like, amongst the mountains.

Traci Thomas 3:21
Wait, do you live in Colorado?

Nate Marshall 3:22
I do. I live in Colorado, which is kind of funny given like, you know, I mean, I don’t know if we’re gonna, like, have much we’re gonna dig in. But yeah, that’s it’s kind of a funny Quirk. But I now live in Colorado,

Traci Thomas 3:32
Where in Colorado?

Nate Marshall 3:34
I’m in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Traci Thomas 3:37
That’s on the eastern side of the state. It’s so in like Central.

Nate Marshall 3:41
It’s on the Front Range. Like the Front Range is basically everything. It’s the stuff like right to the east of the Rockies. Okay. And Colorado Springs is about a, about an hour south of Denver.

Traci Thomas 3:55
And Colorado Springs is like a very conservative place, right?

Nate Marshall 3:59
It’s a weird town. So it’s a lot of military. So like, there’s a bunch of bases and the Air Force Academy is here. It’s also like a sort of hub for the evangelical movement. So like, family and Young Life, and a number of organizations are kind of centered here. So it’s like, kind of a weird place because like, you have that and then you have like, you know, people that like like nature and write your legal weed and also the Olympic Committee is also here. So then you’re also just, it’s like, oh, randomly, there’s like a world class athlete just like running very quickly button. So that’s so weird. It’s a very strange collection of humans.

Traci Thomas 4:39
I spent a little time in Colorado in 2008. I worked on the Obama campaign, like at a field office all the way on the western slope, but all the way in the bottom in this town called Cortez, which is in Montezuma County. If you look at the map, it’s the furthest south west of all of Colorado and it is like the It’s like one of the reddest counties in the state. It was the craziest experience. And I have very, like fond memories from the time. But I did not realize, you know, people talk about like, oh, you know, there’s red states and blue states, but every state’s actually really purple. I did not realize exactly what that meant, because I thought I think of Colorado is like being a purple state. But like, I didn’t realize that it’s like, you have a bright fucking red County in one place. And then you have Denver and like the county next door is where Durango was or where Durango is. And that’s like a super blue County. And like, the first night we were there, there was a Michael Franti concert, like it was just like a crazy, crazy experience. I have a lot of like weird feelings about Colorado generally,

Nate Marshall 5:44
Yeah, during 2016. And that sort of lead up to that election. I was like, touring to different books. And so I was sort of going all over, and especially to these sort of, like, far flung college campuses around the Midwest and around the East, or whatever. And so we’re, you know, we’re driving through all these small places. And so yeah, I just have a lot of thoughts about the way that geography shapes our politics. So in ways that we don’t always think about it, especially when we’re kind of like for those of us who might be focused in these like, particular urban centers, right?

Traci Thomas 6:20
You could write a poetry collection on this, and I would understand it, and it would be my dream. Okay, I want to know how someone who writes poetry from the south side of Chicago discovers that they have this talent. And who tells you that you’re good at it? How do you know? Like, because the reason I’m asking this question is because I had like a fake boyfriend in high school, who always wrote poems. Like, I liked him, so I thought they weren’t good. But like, they’re good. Like, I’m some. So how do you know that you’re, like, actually good at poetry versus like, a girl has a crush on you, tells you that you’re good.

Nate Marshall 7:02
First of all, shout out that fake boyfriend out here, but um, yeah. So the very first poem I ever wrote in life, I was in third grade, I like to grow. I wrote this poem that I was very proud of that I think was like, it was like, an extended metaphor and allegory of that, like, liking her and sort of like getting, like working up the courage to do something about it. And funny enough, given where I live now, it was called the mountain. I never gave it to her. Because I was going to I had in my bookbag, and my mom was like, looking through my stuff or something. I found it. And it was, like, folded up. And she was like, What is this? Because she was like, I don’t know what she thought it was like, I don’t know, my the permission slip to him. The Gangster Disciples, I don’t know what you thought it was. But um, so she was like, kind of mad. And then she like, opened it and read it. And then she was like, she kind of just laughed and was like, Oh, sweet. And I was like Moulton, cool. I am never gonna do this ever again. So. So, you know, that was like, early. But a couple years later, I started writing. And really it was, it was a few things, it was that we had to do a project in school, this thing where we had to, like write a book. And it was a contest or whatever. And also, I sort of got interested in hip hop, right? And so why those two things while the book thing, I want to write a book, and I knew enough about poetry to understand it didn’t have to take up the whole page. And so it was, it was like a waste Choice. Choice. I’m like, what if I just write these poems?

Traci Thomas 8:44
What if it’s a bunch of haikus?

Nate Marshall 8:47
Right. Right. And so I did that. And then yeah, and then I was like, interested in binding. And so that gave me a different sort of focus on language, right? And so you know, so I wrote this little book that went into the contest, and it won the contest of the level at the school. And my teacher, either teacher, Mrs. Cat shot him, this captures like my middle school English teacher, my fifth grade homeroom teacher, but she was like, Yo, we’re doing this thing, this poetry slam thing, you should be a part of it. And at the time, I think the poetry slam had a cut off of you had to be 13. And I was in the seventh grade, but I was like, a little older. And so it was me and a bunch of eighth graders who should have sort of pinpointed for this thing, and I was like, This sounds terrible. I don’t want it. First of all, I don’t want to say this stuff in public. Why would I do that? Second all, none of these people are like my friends. They’re eighth graders. We have nothing in common. And three notes. And so I just took the I took the permission slip home and just never asked, like, I just was like, I’m gonna just let this deadline pass. And that was my end of it. And Mrs. Cap was like, Yo, look, I know, I know. You must have forgot. So I signed you Anyway, and if you don’t come, like, you know, you’re not gonna like your grade. And so I was forced into it. But um, but it was cool, because when we did the first, the first event at the Youth Slam in Chicago at the time, this thing called like crossing the street, and I walked in across the street, and it really kind of blew my mind, right, it was all these kids who were like, really interesting and cool. And they dress cool. And like, they seemed really smart. It was the first time I ever saw I think, like, people like freestyle rapping. It was just like, really this beautiful space. And I was like, Yo, I want to do this, I’m gonna, like be in this kind of space. And so yeah, like from that point on, I kind of, I think that was when I began to really self identify as a writer. And then we began to take it seriously. And a lot of it was really it was like, that this community was cool to me. And I wanted to be a part of it. And that was sort of the way to do it. And also, like, I should say, most of the students that were in the poetry, some were high school kids, they were like, probably 16 1718. And so when you’re 13, that seems so old to you, right? That I was like one I’d like look up to these people. But three years from now is so long, it’s so unimaginably long that if I do this from now, until then, then maybe I’ll be okay. Right. But yeah, it was really, it was really just like, Mrs. Cat and then like, wanting to be a cool kid.

Traci Thomas 11:32
Okay. I don’t want to mean to ask you this question, but I have to ask because I have a follow up. Yeah. How old are you? Or what year? Were you born?

Nate Marshall 11:40

  1. Okay, I’m 32.

Traci Thomas 11:43
Okay, so you’re a little younger than me. I don’t, I’m assuming that you are probably up on this. But do you remember like in the late 90s, early 2000s, like that poetry was like, very cool. There was like Def Poetry Jam on TV. And like, I did they have a thing called Youth Speaks where you were.

Nate Marshall 12:01
So so the organization in Chicago is called Young Chicago authors. Okay. And I’ve worked for them. So like, I know a lot about this kind of world, but you speak is sort of the national organization. They’re based in the Bay.

Traci Thomas 12:16
That’s where I’m from. And so all of my friends in high school, not all my friends, but like, I had a group of friends who we called, very creatively, the poets. They didn’t go to my high school, but they’re like, they’re a bunch of them. Were in use, but actually my sister in law, I met her in high school, she’s married my brother, and she was like, in Youth Speaks and she was a poet. And they were very cool. In high school. Like, it was like a cool thing to be a poet. And then there was the whole Def Poetry Jam, like I got to go to a taping because one of my friends from high school was like, on I went to Kanye West second time there when he brought all the suitcases where I never talked about this, but and I will because I because we’re here, but he hit on me after the show. And I didn’t know who he was. Wait, this was in 2000 2004. And he was like, hey, done. And I was like, Hi, excuse me, like, I don’t like to be spoken to by strangers. And then my friend was like, Are you actually insane? And I was like, I don’t know. But he was giving me weird vibes. I didn’t like it. I’m a freshman in college. So it was cool.

Nate Marshall 13:20
Good call was second off. Wow.

Traci Thomas 13:23
Right. Do you know do you know Bo? Sia Yeah, absolutely. So he was his he was one of the people that night Kanye and then my friend Rafa, who is since been in that Trainspotting movie. Yeah, yes. Yeah. That’s the home. No. Okay. So we have some Yeah, so I know that that Berkeley crew of poets and like, but at that time, I feel like that was like, really cool. And it’s like, not cool in the culture. The way that it was, like, I don’t feel like people are like, oh, let’s like go to a poetry slam or like, oh, this poet is like, I don’t know. Do you feel like it is still? I mean, you’re in that world.

Nate Marshall 14:05
Yeah, I don’t know what the youth are to this now. Because I’m like, I teach college students and in my head, I’m like, fairly young and also like, in the context of being a college professor, I’m quite I’m still quite young, even though I’ve been doing it for a while. And but yeah, like to my students, like you’re washed. I’m a little washed. Yeah. Washed Agnes and um, it’s, it’s deeply troubling to me.

Traci Thomas 14:31
I’m older than you. I’m deeply washed, don’t worry.

Nate Marshall 14:36
So I have, well, you just you gave me like, a bunch of things. I have a bunch of stories. Okay. I have a Boethius story. Okay. Or I have just a Deaf poetry story. Okay. Yeah. Also, I just I like love Rafa and Davi they’re great. So

Traci Thomas 14:54
yeah, yeah, I didn’t know Dahveed but Dahveed went to Brown with my brother and They were both mix mix guys at Brown from the bay. So apparently they got confused a lot and my brother was like, I’m not that guy. And

Nate Marshall 15:10
I like new Dahveed I think that’d be less welcoming Rafael because because Russell worked at the University of Wisconsin for some time, okay for this this program called first wave that I very nearly went to for undergrad. But um, the funny story about Daveed is

Traci Thomas 15:26
For people who don’t know Daveed Diggs is the guy from Hamilton, right? Thomas Jefferson.

Nate Marshall 15:31
Jefferson or Lafayette and yeah, he wrote this Coloradans thing and co star blind spot,

Traci Thomas 15:38
right blind spotting What did I call it? Trainspotting was a different movie.

Nate Marshall 15:41
But But he, um, he was in this other I think it’s called wonder. Okay. And so they did early screening of it in Chicago, some years back when it came out. And they asked me, like, interview them. And I’m like, okay, cool. And at the at that time, my nephew was my nephew had like, gotten home. This doesn’t embarrass him. Sorry, man. He had gotten suspended from school for like, you know, have a little little running a little, you know, Chris Rock in a situation. And so he, but he was reading the book wonder at the time, and it happened to be, he happened to get suspended right at this exact moment. So it was kind of cool, because I like, for the time he was he was spent like maybe two days and outside. Like, he stayed with me. And I like took him to work. And like, made him do his homework. And then we like, that was like one of the things we went to and we like, hung out with Debbie. You know, it’s like

Traci Thomas 16:37
It sounds like real punishment.

Nate Marshall 16:39
Yeah, I mean, I’m very I’m like, not a good uncle in that respect. But I do like my uncles.

Traci Thomas 16:47
Uncles are not for punishing people. I don’t think that’s why parents are for.

Nate Marshall 16:53
I think I made him like wake up at 5am and like, do push ups and then okay.

Traci Thomas 16:58
That is a call abuse. Okay.

Nate Marshall 17:01
I was in a fraternity. So this is that makes sense to me.

Traci Thomas 17:04
Okay, that works. That works. Okay, wait. So here’s what I want to know, this is like my big question. You are a very cool guy. You’re young ish, but just not compared to your students, but you’re young in the scheme of the world. And you’re a poet. And, you know, like I said, poetry used to be sort of like a cool, like, mainstream thing for like it had like its moment. But how do you feel about the idea that, like, so many people, myself included, are so intimidated by the art that you make? Or like the work that you do?

Nate Marshall 17:35
First of all, thank you for calling me a cool young person. I am so deeply moved. I think, yeah, poetry definitely had a moment like in that kind of late 90s, to, you know, to 2000 through the 2000s kind of moment. In some places it happened, you know, but slightly different timelines, but broadly, and in some certain ways, we’re out of that moment. But in a lot of ways, I think we’re actually still in it, right? Because you still are seeing the fruits of that time. Really continue to make waves in the culture, even if you’re not actively thinking about it is that so I think about like, we’re wrapping and Dahveed are getting up to Hollywood. The head writer of iron heart is for Marvel is Tanaka Hodge, who like him up in the vein. Yeah, yeah, that’s dumb. And then like, you know, I mean, Amanda Gorman, like, comes out of some of that same new programming, right, um, you know, Chance the Rapper and Vic Mensa and Saab, and a lot of those folks, no name came out of Chicago, like, you know, they were coming, we were coming up in the same youth communities and running around some of the same organizations and institutions. And so yeah, even even if, like, this specific art form, it doesn’t feel as sort of trendy, I still think like, it very much has a kind of presence that, that continues to make waves. But um, yeah, so there’s sort of a second part of the question of like, what is it mean? Or how do I feel that like, people were, like, intimidated by it? I think it makes sense. I think we teach poems in Canada. I think most of us are introduced to poems as poems, in school. And in that school setting, we’re often exposed to them in ways that are really, I don’t want to say, bad or negative. I don’t like bad tall teachers. But I think that the way that we framed poems is often really unhelpful, right? We kind of frame poems as like, non mathematical word problems, where there is a single answer, and, you know, in there kind of like a part of like, how we build a reading comprehension, right? In the kind of p 12. Space and I just think that that’s like a bad idea, right? Because, like, for me, like, a poem is all about wonder, right? It’s all about like, whether like, the thing that’s being described in the poem opens up this some level of wonder for me or I wonder what is going on or what have you, right? And, you know, that is maybe a little bit fluffy. And maybe this is why I don’t, you know, I’m like not teaching middle school and I’m, you know, doing doing the college and you I can pontificate like that. And it’s right, right, right, acceptable. But, um, but I think if we started from a place of wonder and started from a place of like, Look, if you don’t know what’s going on here, that’s okay. What do you notice, then poems will feel a lot more approachable to people. But I will say, I think that we’re constantly surrounded by poetry don’t always recognize it as poetry. Right? You know, like, a lot of our music, especially now, it’s in part because hip hop is so dominant and so influential even to other kinds of music. A lot of our music is deeply poetic, right, just at the level of language, it’s very tech, right? You know, you see a lot of a lot of television and film now engaging, kind of poetic device, right? I think also, like, the way and this is, this is maybe tailed off slightly from where it was a few years ago. But even like, the way that poems get pushed around the Internet, whether that be via video, or just the sharing of like, a link to it to a literary genre, whatever. Like, I think it’s a really great moment. For poetry. I think people are reading poetry a lot more than they have been in, in many past generations. But I think that we don’t always recognize it as such. And we also maybe don’t, even though we might be reading a lot of poetry, or experience a lot of poetry, we’re not reading books of poems. And so we don’t think about the poetry at the level of the book in the same way that we think about like, a novel, or we think about a short story, because like, there really isn’t. With a novel, there’s not another way to experience the novel, there is the book, or the audiobook or whatever. But like it is, that’s the book is just a unit of meaning. That’s not too important. I can break it down a million different ways. And so it seeps in, but you don’t necessarily know. Right?

Traci Thomas 21:57
I feel like the way when I think of poems, the first thing I think of is like a white man in nature. And I have zero idea, like exactly what that specific references for me because I don’t know any poems that I can think of like off the top of my head, about like a white man in nature. But like, that’s what it evokes in me. Like, I never think of like, oh, a poem. I don’t think of like a rap song that I love or even like a singing song that I love. And I don’t think of Bossa even though I have had much more experience with that kind of poetry, that’s just like, not what I think of. Do you feel like that is common for the young people that you interact with? I know that you were like, involved with Chicago’s curriculum. And like, I know that you enter your college now, but like, you’ve had a lot of experience with young people like, is that how people are? Is that what their entry point is, like, something that’s white and distant? And not necessarily like, what the possibility within poetry can be?

Nate Marshall 23:04
Yeah, I think it depends on the student. Right? So I think students who, who are really excited about poems, I think, often, like I have this phrase I’ll use sometimes with my friends, where we talk about kind of like first poets like who your first poet so like, Bosi is one of our first poets, right? first people that I saw that really was like, Oh, this is cool. Like, I’m interested in what he’s up to. And I think that it’s a young person. If I encounter a young person, there’s sort of excited about poetry, they’re on fire for it. Then often, they’ve had some good first poets, and I think there’s a lot of people contemporarily who are who are that? So I think of like, Sarah Kay and Phil Kay, I think of Eve Ewing Mahoney, I think of warsash should I think of Ruby tower? Right, all these sorts of folks. Right? And many others, right. But I’ve Yeah, I think if you’ve had like, a kind of more negative, or maybe more alienating first poll experience, then it’s some of the people you’re talking about. Right? And that could be like, you know, someone like William Wordsworth who’s like doing this pastoral situation or Bobby ice, aka Robert Frost snowy woods, and, you know, I mind this kind of stuff, but like, but like, here’s my thing with that stuff, too, is like, I I’m a nerd about this shit. So like, I like that stuff, too. But I don’t know if that is the place where you start. Right? Because I think first maybe like, it helps to have something that maybe more more reflects you or at least like, is strange to you in some ways where you lean in. Right? And then you can like appreciate that some of the really interesting and really like special stuff that will happen in a Robert Frost poem like out or, you know, in, you know, Williams we’re way more it’s worth like we are seven or whatever right? Yeah, I don’t know.

Traci Thomas 25:02
I just I think one of the things I also think that’s really interesting is like, for me, I love William Shakespeare. And what I love most is like the text inverse. I love the iambic pentameter, like I love the rigidity of that. And like, also what you can do with a lion like now is the winter of our discontent, because you can break, you know, I love that stuff. But I do not think of that as poetry even though I intellectually know that’s poetry. And I think some of it for me, it’s like, I don’t think of the stuff that I enjoy as poetry. Like, in my mind, I think that poetry is like, white men outside doing things that I do not understand. Like you said, it’s like a mathematical problem. There is one right answer, and I do not have it. But when I think about the poetry that I do like and the things that have excited me, Shakespeare included, but also like your work, Clint Smith, Hanif abdurraqib, Dwayne Betts, like Eve, Ewing, I don’t, I’m not like, oh, that person’s a poet. I’m like, Oh, this poem is cool, you know, and it’s like this different, like energy around it. And I don’t I mean, I don’t I don’t know exactly why I have this, like, aversion to the idea of poetry, even though I have so many examples of poetry that I actually really enjoy. And I still don’t understand a lot of it, but like, it doesn’t bother me as much.

Nate Marshall 26:19
Yeah, I don’t know for sure. I mean, I think I kind of into the fact that like, the poems you like, you just don’t think of his poems. Yeah. Um, in part, because for me, like, one of the cool things about poems is that they’re sneaky, right? Like, they’re subtle, right? And so, because they can end up anywhere, right? You could have a poem, you know, on your bus card, or, like, that’s like a thing they do in New York, or like, you could have a poem plastered on the wall somewhere, or you could have a poem, you know, included in like, some sort of weird commercial to sell you Nikes or whatever. You know, regardless of sort of how we might feel about all those different kinds of placements. The fact that poetry can move in those kinds of ways, is different and is different. This is what I mean, when I say like, a novel can’t do that. Right, you know, maybe a piece of it, but like, not, not not a sort of self contained thing. And that makes it it makes it slippery in this way.

Traci Thomas 27:20
Right. So right, right, right.

Nate Marshall 27:22
Yeah. So that I liked that. I think that that has a real potential. I think that has a real resonance.

Traci Thomas 27:28
Yeah. Okay. I touched on this earlier, but I’m so curious about this. And of course, like, somehow, we’re already like, running out of time. We’re not really but like we are, and it’s making me crazy, but I know that you’re back at the end of the month. And so I have I’m saving some of my more poetry specific questions for later. But so you wrote a literary arts curriculum for Chicago? Yeah. Okay, but you had a hand in that? What does that mean? What does that entail? And how do you build such a thing? Absolutely. So like, I know, that’s like a huge blob of huge questions. So you just do your best to bring it in for yourself?

Nate Marshall 28:02
Yeah. Well, you know, it was it was a sort of crew of us, it was a collaborative effort when we did this, and wow, that’s somebody that’s like, almost 10 years ago, I guess.

Traci Thomas 28:12
That’s you are you’re doing curriculum 10 years ago, you’re super old, right?

Nate Marshall 28:17
But um, you know, shout out Jamila Woods, who was like one of the people who worked on that as well. But I think that basically, what it wasn’t like, we were doing workshops, all over the city and beyond, you know, myself and a number of other folks who kind of were working with teaching artists. And so in a lot of ways, the curriculum wasn’t necessarily like building a new thing. Moreso what it was, was, was saying, like, Okay, let’s take some of the like, lesson plans that we do, either in classrooms where we have residencies, or as a sort of drop in thing or before an open mic, or what have you, let’s, let’s try to sort of codify some of those things, and build some infrastructure around them so that just like your classroom teacher, can take some of these things in there. Right. And the cool thing about that is, especially with that project is like, we were yet we were using, like sort of traditional poems, but we were also using, you know, songs like rap songs, r&b songs, or, you know, different kinds of music we were using in speeches, like, like, we have a kind of partnership with voices of the people’s history. So we use them, like speeches from Fred Hampton are from union organizers, and whatever and it was, and it also part of what what the sort of aim of that curriculum was to try to at least primarily focus on build it around writers who who had a kind of Chicago time right from the city or had lived and worked in the city or writing about the city or whatever, with the idea of being again that right like that would be a thing that would allow young people from across, you know, that very vast, very diverse city to like Have a little bit of a point of identification, whether that’s Lee Jung Lee, or Fred Hampton, or Gwendolyn Brooks, or Margaret Walker, or whomever, right? Like, so that was kind of the that was kind of the aim of it. And then it was like, we also had like, really good people who did stuff that was more sort of on the like, curriculum development side who were, who were able to, like, take the kind of like weird artists educator language that we spoke and push that into, like, something that was legible to like, people can sound like common core and meeting standards in that way. So it was cool. It was it was like, it was definitely an interesting project. And I was doing that. It was it was like right around when I was in graduate school, too. So he’s like, in a very different way entrenched in this sort of poetic education. And so, so that was like a cool moment, because it allowed me and forced me to be thinking about okay, yeah, I’m in this, like, fancy university. But how do I make that knowledge? Right? legible? Not because it’s not like, it’s too hard for any of these young people or for teachers to get, but if I’m having that, but how can I have that discourse in a way that’s approachable for them? Right.

Traci Thomas 31:11
Right. That’s so I just I’m fascinated by the idea of like, this literary arts curriculum. I love this. Okay, before we move on, just really quickly, because here I am a theater major, who loves Shakespeare, and plays in general, and you write plays, you’ve written plays, allegedly, yes. I feel like I don’t think we’ve ever actually had a playwright on this show. That’s not true. That’s not true. Our Eric Thomas was on and he writes plays, but I didn’t ask him about it. So first of all, writing plays is really fucking hard that I know, I’ve seen enough to know that there’s a lot of horrible plays in the world, and they’re really hard to do. But how do you approach writing? Things? I guess, generally, like, cuz How do you know when it’s gonna be a poem? Or a prose or a play? Like, how do you approach that sort of stuff?

Nate Marshall 32:02
Yeah, that’s a good question. Um, I think a lot of times, like, I sort of move through the different things, right. So I wrote this one play, that I haven’t I need to, I should probably think about what I want to do with it. But like, the play kind of happens, like, there are moments of verses right, there are moments where, where it’s kind of narrated, almost in like something approaching or sitting in between, like, what folks might think of as, like spoken word and like rap, right? So you know, I think I’m always working across things pretty naturally. And sometimes I’ll use one form to figure out another, right. So because I’m really comfortable in poems, sometimes I’ll write a poem to try and figure out voice for something that’s like, longer or different. Or, like, if I’m thinking about like, a fix something that’s like fiction, I’ve done things where I’ve written little play things or written sort of, like, almost like scenes, just like, sort of standalone scenes, or, or whatever, as a way of like, breaking character, as a way to try and like, so for me, like they all kind of, they’re all sort of functioning together. I would say like, where how something comes into the world, a lot of times is like, much less a matter of me and much more a matter of like, capitalism and like, before, or you know, or whatever.

Traci Thomas 33:23
Right? Do you have a favorite? Like, if you could only write in one form forever, you could never do something else? Which one would you pick? What would you think? Wow,

Nate Marshall 33:35
that’s a tough question.

Traci Thomas 33:36
It’s a really fucked up question, actually. So thank you for Yeah, like humoring me.

Nate Marshall 33:43
Honestly, probably what it would be it would it be rap songs? It’d be rap songs. Cuz

Traci Thomas 33:49
Do you blame, like, make your own beats and stuff? Or no, um,

Nate Marshall 33:52
I have, I am not very good or dedicated. But like, for me, like this is one of the things that I love about hip hop, and just about making music, in general is at least the ways that I’ve done it in the ways I’m most interested in it. It’s so collaborative. And like, that’s the thing I also love about the theater scene. And again, right, like going back to when I first started writing, like that was that promise or potential of community is the thing that made me be like, I want to do this. Right. Right. And so I think it would be that because like, because it’s like fun to me, because it’s like, sort of legible to people and it feels approachable to people. And because it becomes like a way to sort of hang out with my friends and like build friendships and, you know, build or build on relationships and, and that’s cool. That’s if I’m just like making a decision in my heart, I guess if are making it with my head. It would be palms, because like,

Traci Thomas 34:49
you’ve had Yeah, yeah,

Nate Marshall 34:53
that’ll give me 10 years. So like,

Traci Thomas 34:54
yeah, yeah, okay. I prefer the heart answer, but I respect that. I’d answer. I have not prepped you for this. So here it is, someone has written in, they’re asking for book recommendations. I’m gonna read to you what they said. And then you’re gonna recommend at least one book. But if you want to do two or three, feel free. I’ll go first so that you have a little time to think, but I might steal your answers and I’m not sorry. This one comes from Joe and Joe says, I have been really into short stories this year. I have recently read and enjoyed the following blood child and other stories back tve Butler, the paper menagerie by Ken Liu. We live in water by Jess Walter islands of decolonial eyes Love by Leon Simpson. My top three moods according to my story graph are reflective, emotional and challenging. I don’t know what those words mean. But okay. I haven’t read a collection of short stories in a couple of months. So would love recommendations. Thank you. Okay. Here’s what I have for you, Joe. I am not a huge short story person. I’ve recently gotten into them. So I’m sure these are very basic, but they’re the ones that stick out to me. The first is Friday, Black by Nona Kwame oggi branya. It is sort of sci fi II and dark and twisty. And the first story in this collection is one of the best short stories I’ve ever read called the Finkelstein five. It’s wild. We did it on the podcast. So if you do read it, there’s an episode for you and an interview with Nona. The second one is called lot by Brian Washington. It is so good. There’s some like interconnected stories. It’s about Houston like black and brown folks in Houston. Each story is like a different street in Houston. His writing is so good. It’s just so good. And then the last one is heads of the colored people by the FISA Thompson spires, which is like the weirdest, coolest black people you’ve ever met. And all of the stories and there’s these like, there’s these stories about these two moms in like school who are battling over their kids and like respectability politics, and it’s like they’re these letters back and forth. It is so good. I think it’s called like LaBelle, Lachlan or something like that the beautiful letters. Okay, but those are my three. Nate, do you have one, two or three short story collections that you want to recommend?

Nate Marshall 37:28
Yeah, yeah, I got this. I got this. I love short stories. Okay. Oh, good. Good. Good. All right. So first one I’ll say is her body and other parties background and Maria Machado. Really interesting. Collection of Lila I’ve tried it, maybe twice, which is like rare for me because I’m just trying to cycle books. But I really, really liked that one. It has like a little bit of like, a little bit of like a gothic sensibility, a little bit of like, there are some sort of vaguely sci fi kind of situations going on. Yeah, but really, really great story collection that I love a lot. Then I’ll say Disha Phileas The Secret Lives of church ladies.

Traci Thomas 38:13
Yes. I did not say that because I’m obsessed with that book. And I feel like I talk about it all the time. But it is so good. It’s so good.

Nate Marshall 38:19
That was probably like my best three the last year on it. But yeah, I love that joint. Yeah, kind of all the stores particularly like the one with the cobbler. got peach cobbler. Yeah, the peach cobbler joint and then how to make love to a fist that’s like the one people are always talking about.

Traci Thomas 38:38
My favorite is John L. Do you remember that one about the girl ya ll ja. Yes, yes, that’s my favorite. That was the one that I was like. Yo, D she’s crazy

Nate Marshall 38:53
yeah, and then the last one is the world isn’t doesn’t require you rheometer Scott, he’s great guy we like were on a panel a few years back together about Kendrick Lamar something. But like, I love his I love his sort of sensibility I love I just like that, that sense that that set of short stories is built in this kind of like invented black town in like Maryland. And it really has this like, competing sense of the mundane and the fantastic, right? So like, one of the stories I think was maybe like the first one. The kind of one of the central characters is like God’s Son. But like his like, fifth or sixth son and God. She’s like, No, no, just like some dude like GMR Jerry price or whatever, right? And like, yeah, God seems like me. Seems like just okay, but yeah, so whatever that story collection like has a real sense of like fun and a reverence but it’s also smart as hell so okay, that’s three.

Traci Thomas 39:55
Those are so good. Joe, if you read any of those, you have to let us know what you think. Thank everyone else you can get your book recommendations, read on the air by emailing ask the stacks at the stacks. podcast.com. Okay, now we get to talk about Nate’s favorite books and least favorite books. We’re going to start I’m excited because we have not really talked about your taste in books very much yet. So I’m excited to sort of see what you’re reading because we’ve been talking so much about like, specifically, just like poems. So this is really thrilling for me because usually by this point in the episode, I know all the answers that I’m gonna get, but I don’t know any of them. Okay, two books. You love one book you hate.

Nate Marshall 40:35
One book I hate. Wow, that is, that’s where we’re gonna get spicy. Okay, book books I love I’ll say, Dubliners, which is another collection by James Joyce. I think I stole it from the bookstore when I was in high school. Okay. And I was like, Oh, this

Traci Thomas 40:52
is what’s the statute of limitations on this crime is what I need to

Nate Marshall 40:55
know. It’s fine. I still so many books in high school, like a tremendous number of Do you still have a lot of them? I do have like a good number of them. That’s good. Yeah. And like, honestly, like high school, we had some good instincts. Because like, it was like that and like, like a bell hooks joint, like, Hey, I was I was like, up to some interesting stuff in my like, who limb days? Yeah, so that’s one. What’s another one that I love? Oh, I’ll say, Robert, Hayden’s american journal. I don’t know. It’s a book of poems. It’s Robert Hayden, like, really important, really great. 20th century black poet. And this book, I just sort of give you this, the book opens with a poem sort of in the voice of a Phyllis Wheatley. Okay, I believe so. It’s like, I think it’s Phyllis Wheatley, like kind of writing to this, this other instance, this enslaved black dude who she like had of correspondence. And I believe that that was like, historically accurate. And then the book ends with this poem called American journalists in the voice of an alien who’s like, come down and like, infiltrated it’s like living amongst the Americans and being like, Oh, this is so weird. And if you think about that, like think about that those bookends, right because like, what is like Wheatley? We we, you know, we live Peters, if not a kind of, you know, someone who’s being dropped into a space that has not grown, having to appraise and figure out how to survive and being both like repelled and attracted by and then you see that, you know, so you get it in this historical way. And then you get it in this little Afro future way. So like that. goes very hard. Book. I hate harder darkness. Like, yeah, yeah.

Traci Thomas 42:50
That’s okay. I’ve never read it. But I feel like someone else has said it on the show. So you’re good. Yeah. You’re always going to? What are you reading right now?

Nate Marshall 43:00
Right now? I’m reading south to America. Yeah.

Traci Thomas 43:06
Isn’t it so good. It’s very good. Oh, my God, what she is doing what she was. She was the guest on last week. Well, last week, but it was today. And she is just so brilliant. It’s like, almost upsetting. Because I’m like, how did you? How does she do it? Oh,

Nate Marshall 43:27
well, yeah, I’ve been rocking with her forever, because like she did. years ago, this book about hip hop that?

Traci Thomas 43:34
Yeah. profits of profits of the Hood. Robin Hood. I just bought it. I haven’t read it yet, but I just bought it. Yeah. And

Nate Marshall 43:41
I really love that book. I think it’s, I mean, it’s probably a little bit dated now. Just because like the culture has changed a lot. But I still think it’s one of the smartest things that has been written on hip hop music. So I love that book. I love like the the John she did about the black national anthem. I love that I really loved the one she did about Lorraine Hansberry. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I’m a fan. Yeah, so I’m reading that. And what else am I reading?

Traci Thomas 44:15
Read a lot of books at once. Are you like a one book person,

Nate Marshall 44:20
I’ll do multiple things, but they kind of have to be just really discreet for me. So like that could be genres or just like they’re really wildly different or formats. So like, at any given time, I’m usually like reading a physical book, I’ll have like, one or two things on my law, tablet situation sent sometimes those would be like things that are coming out. So I’m like reading this novel now. By this wonderful writer named Jim eliminex. Gleason last element. I’m listening. I just finished listening to this book called read until you understand, which is a really beautiful book. I cannot remember the woman’s name.

Traci Thomas 44:59
I was just okay. I’ll find I’ll put it in the show notes. Yeah.

Nate Marshall 45:02
Yeah, it’s great. It’s sort of it’s sort of like reads, it’s sort of autobiographical. And then it reads her life and sort of her life and experience through these like texts of black of black literature. Right. So we’ll we’ll like, get something that’s thinking about mercy. And then then she’ll kind of closerie pieces of like Toni Morrison from a mercy. And then Phyllis Wheatley, ease towards mercy brought me from my pagan land to understand and like, oh, that’s just it goes very hard is very beautiful. So yeah,

Traci Thomas 45:35
I love the description of a book going very hard. I feel like that needs to be more in my vernacular, like, I never said that about a book. But I mean, that about so many books, like, there’s so many books, I’m like, that book went so hard, and I just need to, I’m gonna steal that from you and be saying it a lot. You heard it here first. Okay, this is like, sort of a general question. Are there any genres of books that you don’t read? Or that you avoid? And then are there any genres of books? Like if a new book comes out in this, like specific niche sort of genre or topic? You’re like, I will be reading this? Wow, that’s

Nate Marshall 46:09
a great question. Um, you know, I never gotten much into fantasy. Okay. It’s just the kind of gap like, you know, as a kid, I read, I like, read the Harry Potter things. And I read like a few other things. And like some of those things I love, but like, I just never, it was never like a space, I wanted to dip into all that much. And then something that like a thing that I sort of reach for. I don’t know if there are, I’ll say, like, there was a point, I think when I was in high school, when I was in my book stealing phase, where I was just like, I sort of need to have every book that is about hip hop, right. And at that time, you know, this is probably this is like the early mid 2000s. There weren’t that many. So actually, wasn’t that hard to do that got it? So yeah, so like, that is is a thing that I’ve probably fallen off that a bit

Traci Thomas 47:06
but so like, basically every book by Jeff Chang.

Nate Marshall 47:09
Yeah. Jeff. Jeff Chang is the homie out. Shout out to Jeff. Yeah. Yeah. Another out in Berkeley. Another Bay? Yeah. Yeah. Funny enough. I want to say his his kid was in one of his sons was in that the program first wave that refer work that because that bit, yeah. I love that. But But yeah, so you know, so yeah, so that was kind of my, my wave. I’ll say now, it’s probably more like, if I see any book that seems to be like, a sort of like hip hop influenced, or are like potentially Hip Hop influence poetry book, I and I just like, err on the side of getting it. Because it activates me in multiple ways. And because I probably like feel like, it’s at least a part of my thing. So like, I know who’s doing what

Traci Thomas 47:58
is that? So I haven’t read it yet. So I am like, totally not prepared for next week’s conversation. But is that doppelganger banger? Is that hip hop inspired poetry? Is that what you would call that?

Nate Marshall 48:11
I mean, in some ways, in certain ways, right. Um, the thing I love about that book, too, you know, I don’t want to, because we’re not going to talk,

Traci Thomas 48:18
a little teaser, a little teaser about what you love,

Nate Marshall 48:21
right? Well, I think that book deals really intelligently with the sort of various ways in which blackness manifests in some of these like, and the some of the kind of cultural disconnections, right, so the, the writer, coordinator, Mark Charleston, like, came up in the suburbs of Chicago, right. And so I think that there’s this way in which he’s wrestling with, like black class, in a way that I really love and that I often think, gets missed because in part because we, we so often think of black people as as only the underclass or whatever, and so we don’t have much imagination for like, the black people that exist in suburban spaces, black people that are so upwardly mobile or the black children of those folks, whatever. Right and, and I always just, I’m just like, fascinated in some with some of the ways that that gets wrestled with magnets rendered.

Traci Thomas 49:19
I’m so excited. Okay, what’s a book that you love to recommend to people

Nate Marshall 49:24
or anything about Lucille Clifton? I mean, usually it will start with like blessing the boats because it’s, it’s kind of a big is selected and it has probably like the biggest swath of her work there’s also a newer one called How to carry water but um, yeah, I just I think she’s like great poet like really interested in important like, you know, 20th century black poet so that’s one that I’m I’m often like putting in people’s hands especially if if they’re like, I find poetry unapproachable. I don’t like poetry. I don’t think I like poetry. Like that’s a great place to start and then you’ll be like, Oh, turns out Poetry school

Traci Thomas 50:02
poetry school. Do you listen to audiobooks? Do you have a favorite audio book?

Nate Marshall 50:08
On Beauty by Zadie Smith.

Traci Thomas 50:10
Oh, okay. Yeah. Does she read it?

Nate Marshall 50:13
No, she doesn’t, the reader is kind of great. And the thing that I love about that book Oh, man, I don’t want to get in trouble, I want to be judicious. So, so it’s like, it’s a male narrator I remember his name, but he, that book has a lot of different accents at play. Because it sort of takes place in this kind of fictionalized college town, just outside of Boston or LA, like Cambridge, or any of these, you know, whatever. And, and so you get the, you know, the accent of the Father character who’s like a professor, and like this white British dude. And then the mother who’s a black woman with southern roots, and then one of the sons is like, very into hip hop. And so he’s kind of trying to like, and, you know, he has this sort of, like, mixed kid, whatever situation is, so he’s trying to like, aspect of it, like, you know, his vision of like, a good accent or whatever. And then there’s patient characters. And there’s other Caribbean characters, there’s a, there’s a multitude of British characters animal to the, like, various kinds of American characters. And that dude is just like, he has a real facility with trying to capture all those different registers. And in a way that I just find, I enjoy listening to and I think it actually, in certain ways, I think it works better as an audiobook than as a as like, I’ve read that book in college. And I think it maybe works better an audio than it does like on the page. That’s why I was like, gonna be careful, because I’m not trying to save you Smith.

Traci Thomas 51:56
But there are definitely books that are better for me audio than on the page. Okay, this is sort of our little lightning round. What’s the last book that made you laugh?

Nate Marshall 52:05
Maybe the secret lives of church ladies.

Traci Thomas 52:08
Yeah, yeah. What’s the last book that made you cry?

Nate Marshall 52:12
Oh, wait until you understand.

Traci Thomas 52:15
Okay. Last book that made you angry.

Nate Marshall 52:18
4000 weeks? Yeah. 4000 weeks, which is like, yeah. reading nonfiction book I read.

Traci Thomas 52:26
Okay. What’s the last book that you felt like? You learned a lot,

Nate Marshall 52:31
man, South America, which I’m not done with. But yeah, that’s.

Traci Thomas 52:37
That’s, it’s my Book of the Year. I just think so good. Are there any books that you feel proud about having read?

Nate Marshall 52:45
I’ll give you two that are sort of weird. And I mostly feel proud, I think because I read them very young. And this is a thing I derive pride from when I was young. One. This is a book that I stole the godfather. So I read The Godfather years before I ever saw the film’s okay. Yeah, sorry, to wouldn’t be on high school library. Okay, but whatever. It’s fine. Y’all get over it. And then routes, which I like, asked for outside these routes. I asked for it for Christmas when I was in like sixth grade. And then I read it. And I did like the Accelerated Reader quiz at school for it. Wow. And yeah, so So those are like two.

Traci Thomas 53:29
Did you read it before you saw the movies that you’re seeing?

Nate Marshall 53:33
Haven’t seen all of it. I’ve watched like maybe the the first episode or two of roots, but I’m also like, there’s, you know, there’s some stuff where I’m like, I don’t necessarily need to see that.

Traci Thomas 53:43
Yeah, well, I saw it so young. I did. It was like actually an introduction to slavery for me like now I don’t know that I would need to watch it again. Like I sort of feel like I would get the picture. But I saw it like as a child’s like when you were reading it and stealing it and stuff I or when you ask her. I had like seen it multiple times somehow. Yeah. Do you have any problematic favorite books?

Nate Marshall 54:06
Yes. Yes.

Traci Thomas 54:10
Yes, you have to say at least one.

Nate Marshall 54:14
Okay, here’s one. And this is like, you know, I hope I can get a pass. And you know, whatever. It’s a generational thing. Harry Potter and like, Oh, yeah. You know, I, and I’ll say this, like, I still probably listen to those audiobooks, like, maybe once a year,

Traci Thomas 54:33
like rarely all of them. I’ve never even read a single sentence of those books.

Nate Marshall 54:39
One, the narration of the audiobooks. This is do Jim Dale, like so good. But yeah, they just like remind me of my childhood. Like I feel deeply nostalgic. They were like, a thing that me and my sort of elementary school best friend like shared with each other and so they take me back to a very loving place, but I’ll go Oops actually didn’t tripping?

Traci Thomas 55:01
So oh yeah, she’s horrible. I’ve never read the books. And now I never will. Because she became, we found out she was horrible before I ever read them. Now I’m like, I don’t have a relationship. I don’t fucking care. Oh, is there any book that you think people would be surprised to know that you love?

Nate Marshall 55:19
Oh, this is a book message. Would people be surprised to know that? I don’t know. What would surprise people? Who are people?

Traci Thomas 55:31
I don’t know. A lot of you’re taking this really deep. Okay, very public brain have you? Right?

Nate Marshall 55:39
I think people are surprised when they find I have like a deep affection for Robert Frost. There’s also this isn’t this is a random one. There’s this group of poets from like the early 20th century like 1920s 1930s called the fugitive poets, or the southern agrarians. And I quite like a lot of their poetry that the reason why people would be surprised is one that’s a little obscure. To they were fan has to be racist. Yeah. Yeah. white dudes in Tennessee.

Traci Thomas 56:09
Yeah. I have a question for you that’s unrelated to your book taste. But I this is a really important question that I am so glad to have a poet. E. Cummings. I know that’s what was that person? Like? Like, when did that person right? The reason I’m asking is because when my father passed away, I was too emotional to speak at his funeral, but I really wanted to do something. And so I read an E Cummings poem that I loved and I still love, but I know nothing about E. Cummings at all. Is that a man? Is that a woman? Is that a young person? Is that a white person? Is that person from 1800? Is that a person from 2015?

Nate Marshall 56:53
I was like, kind of early, like first half of the 20th century poet, okay, I’m a white guy.

Traci Thomas 57:00
Many years that was my guess. But I just wasn’t sure I thought maybe there was a chance it was like a Chinese woman. And I can be happy.

Nate Marshall 57:08
No, that’s fair. Um, yeah. I like E commerce there’s like he has a few bangers. I actually funny enough, there’s eaten Cummings poem. I think it’s called like, I carry your heart in my heart or something like that. That I read at the viewings wedding. Wow. Yeah. So

Traci Thomas 57:26
I’ve been so Cummings is like down with the peeps like E. Cummings isn’t? Yeah.

Nate Marshall 57:32
The people are rocking the E. Cummings. Relatively speaking, especially like in comparison, like, some of his contemporaries are, like, you know, fine poets and legitimately sort of awful people. And that’s what I mean, he doesn’t at least to my knowledge, have those same kinds of stains as say, like, Ezra Pound who, like, was the fascist and like writing stuff, like writing propaganda for the Italian government during World War Two, you know, he was like,

Traci Thomas 58:00
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. He was like, Cool, given the time. Yeah. You know, okay. Okay, good. Oh, I feel so good about myself. Yeah. Okay. literally read this poem. 10 years ago. Think about it all the time. Don’t remember anything except for like the first line. But I always I’m, like, too scared to look it up. So I’m glad I had you to hold my hand through that moment. Do you have any favorite books about where you’re from? So Chicago, Southside of Chicago?

Nate Marshall 58:29
Absolutely. Tell. First of all, there was a while where I was like keeping I was sort of keeping track of like books that referenced not just Chicago or the south side, but specifically referenced like, the far south set, like the hundreds where I’m from, there’s like four. One is Barack Obama’s first memoir, Dreams of my father. I really liked that book. There’s also there’s like another weird poets Chicago poet connection on that, because there’s this when he’s in Hawaii, there’s this old dude, there’s all black men and Frank, who like, hung out with his granddad and was like a drinking buddy of his grandfather, who will kind of like, is basically his sort of like, it’s like, the only sort of seem to be the only older black man with whom he like ever has, in depth conversations as a young person. And Frank is this dude and Frank Marshall Davis, who was like, a really important poet who was black poet was writing in Chicago in like the 30s and 40s. But I was like a socialist. And so we ended up going to Hawaii because like, you know, depression or whatever. So, you know, it’s random.

Traci Thomas 59:38
Yeah, I’ll say that Obama is a socialist, is what you’re saying.

Nate Marshall 59:41
Look, you know, I’m saying that

Traci Thomas 59:43
wow, we cracked it right here.

Nate Marshall 59:45
Look, I Obama is, unfortunately not a socialist.

Traci Thomas 59:51
And so unfortunately.

Nate Marshall 59:56
So that’s that, I guess his book will be one there Is this book by a guy named Alex Kaplowitz? Called? Never a city sell real? A Walk in Chicago that I really love. I’m trying to think. I mean, Sandra Cisneros House on Mango Street will be one. My homie Jose elevada. Citizen illegal will be one. Yeah, there’s more but yeah. Okay.

Traci Thomas 1:00:23
I have just one more question for you.

Nate Marshall 1:00:25
Oh, sorry. Gwendolyn Brooks one of the most like, extreme Bronzeville.

Traci Thomas 1:00:30
Okay. Okay, here’s my last one for you. I stole this from the New York Times by the book. If you could require the President to read one book, what would it be? Oh, yes,

Nate Marshall 1:00:40
I’ve seen this one. Wow. Oh, man. I have so little interest in presidents are facing them that it’s hard to say. I mean, I guess maybe my joy, like as a matter of pure self interest. I have, you know, take a pic deal. Like this is this is my this is my thing about it. I really like that question. I think that there are some presidents who are leaders and some are not. But other than know that there are presidents that are like readers, and then using that, like using the wisdom from that reading to like, really intelligently and and compassionately craft, craft legislation or craft policy. And so because of that, I think assigning presidents reading is mostly a fool’s errand. Sure, but yes, they can reimagine, and maybe they’ll put it on a list and then great, you know, like.

Traci Thomas 1:01:38
Well it’s funny that you say, it’s funny that you say like, it’s a fool’s errand because I started the show during the Trump administration, and the answers that I was getting, were just like, so crazy and like wild because it’s like, such an absurd question. When it comes to Trump. And now like, there’s a different level of thought, thought that goes into it now that it’s Biden. And so the thing that I like, for the question is sort of like, how it’s evolved over the last four years of this podcast. Like, people were like, recommending Trump read like, children’s books, like Ferdinand and shit, like, like, really? Like, at, like, the shit that I read on my two year old.

Nate Marshall 1:02:20
Gallery Hop on Pop. Yeah, it was like Trump

Traci Thomas 1:02:23
Gotta read his ABCs or just like, I don’t know, that he couldn’t read. And so, you know, the question is, like, sort of an interesting question. And I was so excited when we got a new president for this question, among other reasons, but this was like, one of the reasons and the answers have actually been less thrilling than I thought, because I also realized, like, like you said, like, no one really, like cares about President a hypothetical.

Nate Marshall 1:02:46
Like, honestly, like, they’re mostly trouble.

Traci Thomas 1:02:51
Yeah, no, we all know how we all feel about presidents. Okay, this is it for us today. Please go get Nate’s books, and send them to Joe. Send Joe, copy my gosh, get it and get it in Joe’s hands. You have two poetry collections, and you’re an editor on the breakbeat poets collection. I’ll link to everything in the show notes. The most recent one has been a guy named Marshall the one before that is the wild hundreds. And then as I mentioned briefly poet’s we’re gonna be back April 27, to talk about doppelganger banger by Courtney Lamar Charleston. Nate, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, and everyone else we will see you in a second.

All right, everyone. That does it for us today. Thank you so much to Nate Marshall for being our guests. We will be back Wednesday, April 27 for the Stacks book club conversation of doppelganger banger by Cortney Lamar Charleston. If you love the show and want inside access to it, head to patreon.com/thestacks to join The Stacks Pack. Make sure you’re subscribed to The Stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts and if you’re listening through Apple Podcasts or Spotify, be sure to leave us a rating and a review. For more from The Stacks, follow us on social media at thestackspod on Instagram at thestackspod_ on Twitter and check out our website thestackspodcast.com. This episode of The Stacks was edited by Christian Dueñas, with production assistance from Lauren Tyree. Our graphic designer is Robin McCreight and our theme music is from Tagirijus. The Stacks is created and produced by me, Traci Thomas.

Megan Caballero
Previous

Ep. 210 A Warm Hug with Danny Pellegrino
Next

Ep. 208 A Mercy by Toni Morrison -- The Stacks Book Club (Imani Perry)