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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

Poetry Off the Shelf: Pen Pals

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

Sean Cole: I’m waking up on Cape Cod to the craziest bird noises outside. I don’t know if you can hear them. Or if they’re quieter now that I’m trying to tape them. Damnit.

Helena de Groot: This is my friend Sean Cole. Over the past few months, he and I have been sending each other these little voice memos.

Helena de Groot: Let me just check if I’m still recording. I am, I certainly am.

Helena de Groot: I love a good voice memo. They’re easy to make, much easier than dinner plans, and they can be so intimate. It’s like I’m in my friend’s head, because, really, they’re talking as much to themselves as they are to me.

Sean Cole: This time I was smart and I recorded on the voice recording app, which I should have just done that the entire time, I don’t know why I didn’t.

Helena de Groot: The whole reason we started sending these messages is, Sean Cole, who’s a poet, recently came out with a new collection, titled After These Messages. So, of course we talked about poems, including the fact that he wasn’t writing any.

Sean Cole: Partly because every time I think about writing a poem I want a cigarette.

Helena de Groot: Sean is trying to quit, if that wasn’t abundantly clear from the anguish in his voice. He was also trying to document the process for his day job. Because besides being a poet, Sean works for this radio show called This American Life, which, unlike his poetry, has an audience of millions. People get writers’ block over less. And so I could hear, the closer he got to deadline, the more interesting literally anything else became.

Sean Cole: If you’ve ever wanted to know what happens in the back of a police precinct, I can tell you because my window looks out exactly onto the back of the precinct. And the answer to what happens in the back of a police precinct is nothing, nothing happens. There’s no activity whatsoever.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: So that’s today’s episode of Poetry Off the Shelf. A series of messages between Sean Cole and me, Helena de Groot. Let’s call this one Pen Pals. A quick warning before we dive in. Well, two warnings. One, we swear a lot. And two, we talk about death and we really get into it, because Sean, over the past several years, has lost three of his four parents: first his mother, then his stepfather, Ed, who he’d known since he was six, and not long after that, his father. So yeah, please take care if that’s not something you want to hear about today. 

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Let me take you back to the beginning. When we started sending these messages, it was May. And about six months before, Sean had moved back to his favorite neighborhood in Brooklyn, Greenpoint, after a few years away. But even after half a year, he was still getting used to the apartment.

Sean Cole: It’s crazy in here, with the most insane floral wallpaper from, like, stem to stern and—is that the expression? Whatever, from, like, tip to toe, and I fucking love it. But it takes me forever to get settled and to, like, get fully furnished even. And, uh, like I’m unpacked I guess, but it still looks like another apartment threw up in this apartment.

(TAKES SIP)

And, I moved back ’cause, I didn’t know how at home I felt here until I left. It was one of those things. It’s where I feel the most at home in New York. It’s probably where I’ve felt the most at home since I left Boston. I think it also reminds me a little bit of Boston. It’s kind of low and there are these, like, rows of duplexes. It’s near a body of water, and there’s a bunch of churches.

Okay. Happy morning to you and I hope that you have a great Tuesday day day. Okay, bye.

Helena de Groot:  Sean, this is so lovely. And I was thinking about that, too, you know, like, this drive to, like, move back home in a way, to move back to where you feel at home. It’s so funny, right? We’re like, I’m gonna move away. I’m gonna be like an artist in the city! I’m gonna be so exciting! And then, uh, no. (LAUGHS) Kind of what you’re looking for is home, you know?

So anyway, yeah, I’m wondering about that. Like, how has your relationship to home changed? And especially now that your, yeah, your mom is no longer there. Do you feel like you even have a home to return to? And like, what does it mean for you to build your own home, you know? Because you don’t have kids. And I don’t wanna be grandiose and be like, well, you know, you must build your home in words. I mean, maybe. Tell me if you do.

Sean Cole: Hey, ha, this is great. (LAUGHS) What a great conversation. Uh, yeah, kids. Wow. Um, and home. And it is a great question in terms of what is home without making a home for a family of that nature. I think about that a lot too, and how when your parents die … yeah. You, I mean, you, you can’t, you literally, the home kind of goes away. I remember Christmas 2021 was the first year that going home for the holidays, I guess, meant going to my sister’s place. And, you know, and they’re wonderful, her and her husband, they’re like, “You can come here anytime, you know, blah, blah, blah.” And that’s not blah, blah, blah, you know what I mean? And that’s great. But it, it is, yeah, it’s weird, not having a place that is kind of automatic and that you can just, like, kind of walk in the door unannounced. Yeah, and I remember also discovering that I wanted to talk to my stepdad because of something that had happened, but he was dead. And so that was when I also discovered that I can’t, also I can’t call home anymore. And it’s an incredibly lonely feeling. I’m very lonely without my parents all the time in a way that I don’t really tend to talk about very much but that I think about a lot.

Yeah. I guess, I guess that’s, I love, I love this conversation. It’s very fun. We should totally keep doing this beyond the podcast. Oh, that’s what I was gonna say, yeah, I don’t know exactly how it ties back to the poems other than the fact that the poems, I was, I was in, I was in Denmark and I was hanging out with my friend Pike Malinowski, who’s a poet, and his friend Martin, who’s a filmmaker, and we’re all sitting around the table and, you know, Martin and I were just getting to know each other and he was asking me about the poems. And what I write about or whatever, which is, you know, just like a question that I’ve always dreaded ’cause what do you say? But then I was like, oh, death. The poems are all about death. And I think, I think they’re, I think they’re about death and, and the thing that happens before death. Like, like I think they kind of, it doesn’t, now I’m, now it turns out that I hate listening to myself talk sometimes. Okay.

Helena de Groot: Oh my God, Sean, I completely dropped the ball there. I just disappeared for what, a week? I’m sorry. And especially, I’m sorry, because your last message, you kind of ended it on death. And you said also that your poems, that your poems are kind of all about death and all the stuff that comes before it, you know? But I, now I saw, like the manic energy almost. Like life, everything, you know, ads included, people on the subway included, like, just all of the things that come on our path as we do this thing before death.

(STREET NOISE)

Sean Cole: I’m just going for my morning constitutional in the peaceful climes of Greenpoint, here. I thought I’d take a walk down by the water. So this is where I like to come, this, um, pier, it sort of juts out into the, like, pretty far into the river. So you’re just standing right over the water and looking at Manhattan. And it’s like you’re on a boat except it’s like a boat that’s not going anywhere. And there are all of these locks that lovers have locked up to the barricade here and thrown the, the key into the, into the East River. All these locks. I wonder what happened to all those relationships. (PAUSE) So this is the first of the “Commercial Break” poems in the book.

(READS POEM)

Commercial Break

I don’t have rheumatoid arthritis. I do have

a special plastic spout my girlfriend gave me

to keep wine fresh. She’s gone now. All

is loss. I’m the next Dancing With Stars

champion, though, so that keeps me going.

This place stinks of absentia. What happens

when my osn house reminds me of us,

my own skin. My “a-ha” moment

is still in the future. Fortunately,

I’ve found the most effective yogurt

for my hair. Potent, proven, leave it in

long enough it becomes cheese. That’s when Sean’s

ready for dating. Five years ago,

a message was buried in the fashion world.

They said we should wait. That message

is me. Take a picture.

Send it to someone you love.

Forget she’ll eventually leave.

Rub all over with cranberry soap.

Repeat.

(MUSIC PLAYS)

Helena de Groot: One of the things I’m so curious about is if you’re still drawn to the manic, frantic muchness of life, especially ’cause you have experienced so much death lately so, so close by. And uh, do you feel like your mom is somewhere? Or is she just very much not there?

Sean Cole: Okay, um, my mother, when we were going through her journals—I say “we”, my stepdad sent me a quote from one of her journals and she said something like, “The poet Sean Cole says,” (LAUGHING) not acknowledging that I’m her son, but like, “The poet Sean Cole says,” and then a quote from a poem of mine. I’m doing a really bad job at this because I couldn’t even tell you what the line is, but it’s something about acknowledging or respecting your future worms, meaning the, you know, being underground and being eaten by worms. And she said that it gave her a shudder. The journal entry was all about her really feeling her own mortality and feeling fear of death. I can dig it out for you. But isn’t that something? I got, you know, I got choked up by that. The poet Sean Cole. That’s so funny.

When she was cremated, we went to the boardwalk on Cape Cod. And we shook out her ashes into the marsh. It’s a very messy business and you get it on you a lot, to the point where like, you know, afterwards we were in the parking lot and my sister looked at me and said, “You have ashes on your glasses.” It made me think like, oh, you know, they talk about how matter is never created nor destroyed, it just changes form. So it felt like she changed form, (TEAPOT WHISTLES) and her atoms were still there, like, the atoms that made up her brain, that made up her heart, that made up, you know, her mouth and her eyes like, they’re still here on the planet Earth, you know. In terms of where is she spiritually? I don’t know. I do know that these days there are moments where I will be walking around my apartment or wherever, kind of talking to myself, and it’s almost like I’m possessed by her. Like, I’ll be, like, saying, like, little cute, quippy things to myself kind of in her cadence. I almost sound like her, like my voice almost sounds like her. And uh, it’s nice. It’s like I’m being visited by her somehow. I couldn’t do it for you right now, but like, it just kind of happens. It doesn’t happen with Ed, nor with my father, who we’re sort of, we’ve been leaving out of this conversation. But my biological father also died about three months after my stepfather. I didn’t watch him die, but I watched my stepdad and mom die, (PAUSES) which is a thing I don’t, it’s a thing I don’t, it’s a thing that I never, that I, that I don’t, that acknowledge enough, you know what I mean? Like, I don’t, I never, like, it was like a, there was a moment recently where I kind of stopped. And I was like, hang on a second, it’s not just that my mother died and my stepdad died and my biological father died. I watched two of those people die. I watched it happen, you know, and they went from being people who were alive to people who were no longer alive. With my mother, it was very eerie and very, there was, it was not subtle. She was, you know, she was taken off the machines. My sister and me were holding her hands. My sister was looking away ’cause she couldn’t bear to look, I think, at my mom’s face. My mom was gasping for air. She wasn’t conscious and she was, they told us she wasn’t uncomfortable, but her body was still trying to live. And couldn’t. And, and then everybody left the room and I stayed in the room and I was looking at her. And the color drained from her face. And she became extremely pale and her lips sort of curled around her teeth and her face hollowed out and she became a corpse. Oh, boy. I think it did something in me that I’m not yet fully, uh, that I haven’t really metabolized. I’ve never written about that. And it’s informed, I think, everything that I do, but it hasn’t, like, you know, I think you’re the first person I’ve said that to, actually. Told that, described that in that much detail.

I think you asked me other things, but I should probably leave it there and pour the now somewhat tepid water into the coffee thing. I’ll just give it a little bit of a warmer here. I just, that’s so funny, Helena, maybe it’s because I’m talking to you, but I just accidentally made coffee for two people instead of one. Cheers and thanks so much.

(MUSIC PLAYS)

Helena de Groot: I have not talked to anyone yet. Well, I better not, ’cause it’s 7:20. I dunno who would want me to have talked to them already. (YAWNS) Since we’re talking about dying, my God, do you wanna talk about aging? Do you feel older? I was gonna say old, if that sounds … Well, I do. I feel old. I’m like pulling my face up, you know, like my cheeks to just be like, so I could be like this. Um, yeah. Now I just finished reading an article in the New York Times about if there’s such a thing as an at-home facelift, you know, if there’s any tool or cream or injection that you can—why am I reading this stuff? I’m not gonna do that. I’m not, I’m too proud. Um, (LAUGHING) you know what I recently started to do? Because, you know, I was noticing how I would wake up and my face would be all puffy. And I, I didn’t used to have that. And I drink water and I do, you know, I do all the things. I don’t even drink alcohol. Um, but my face would be puffy. And so I looked up on the internet like, why, why? And one of the things the internet said in its infinite wisdom, was that it can be because when you sleep, water basically goes to the lowest point. So if you sleep on your side or you sleep, god forbid, on your belly, with your head, like, down, then the water will collect in there. So I have taken to sleeping on my back (LAUGHS) so that the liquid in my face can just drain right to the back of my head where nobody can see it. Anyway, why am I talking to you about this? I just wonder: is aging a thing that you think about? That scares you? That you’re excited about? That can, you know, we can, you can be that person. I will support that. Um, and I dunno why you write, Sean. I don’t know why, if, that’s even a smart question to ask, you know, like maybe you just do it because you like it or because you do it. So, uh, do you know why you do it? Uh, yeah. And if aging has something to do with that. Like do you, do you have this kind of fear of the devil in you, you know, you’re like, wow, right, I still have to do this and that now that I still can.

Sean Cole: I’m now in Copenhagen. I’m standing, I don’t know, some governmental or monarchical building, vaguely castle/church looking, and, yeah, everything looks really ancient and there’s a statue of the Queen or a queen that’s so old it’s green and corroding. And aging, I think, I think about all the time, Helena. I’m like, I’m like, that’s all I think about. I’ve always identified in my life. I realized at a certain point as somebody who’s under 40, and, not to other people, but it’s just how it felt. It was like, oh, I’m a person who’s under 40, which became a problem when I turned 40. And it became a real problem when I turned 50. And it’s dawning on me more and more that I’m in real trouble, because I’m just going to keep aging and I really don’t like it. And I totally relate to you sleeping on your back. I think that’s hilarious, letting all the water drain to the back of your head. Fantastic. And to looking up the self-facelift thing in the New York Times, totally get that. I’m, among my age-related obsessions, one of them is my hair is falling out a lot. I’ve got, it’s like I, I’m always touching the bald spot on the top of my head, which people shorter than me can’t see. So as long as I keep dating people who are shorter than me, it’s going well. But, um, it’s so bald now that like it’s like a baby’s head. Not a 51-year-old man’s head. As an aside, my sister said when Ed was dying and in hospice, that she didn’t realize how much like caring for a dying adult was like caring for an infant. Down to like changing their diapers, whatever. But also like they’ll make a sound, you’re like, “What was that?” You know, “Are they okay?” kind of a thing. Anyway, yeah, and so, I don’t, like, sit around thinking that I need to write poems so that people will remember me. Or that, like, I’m doing that for posterity. I, why do I do it? That’s an excellent question. One that I almost never ask myself. All I know is that I’m less happy when I haven’t done it in a long time, and I’m much happier when I’ve just done it. And, uh, look, writing a poem is the most insane thing to do. Nobody’s asking you to do it. Nobody, kind of, nobody wants you to do it. A lot of people don’t want you to do it. Hello, puppy. Hello! Hello, puppy. Hello. (LAUGHS) Oh boy. Where am I now? It’s like, this is old as shit. This place is so old. Talk about aging. Man, I can’t believe I’m gonna keep getting older. I really don’t wanna do it. And I don’t mind the idea of being dead, but I sincerely do not want to go through the process. At all. ’Cause I’ve seen it happen man, and it is not cool. Oh, somebody’s coming out this door and therefore I do not wanna be in front of it when they emerge. I’m gonna go get some dinner!

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: Ugh, I don’t wanna like, force you to be in eternal conversation with me in this epistolary—epistolary? That’s the word, right? Or is that almost the word? Anyway, I like this, plus I have legitimate other questions for you. Because, you know, this whole thing of, like, how does your storytelling brain and your poem-writing brain, like, how do they work together or compete or strangle each other out of existence, we haven’t really talked about that in the depth that I would like. OK, bye, Sean.

Sean Cole: Hey! How nice to get your message today. It’s so fun talking to you. And I hope that it’s not too windy out here. I’m going for a walk ’cause I had to get away from my tape, which has a lot of me in it, and listening to me is challenging. Yeah, and in terms of the thing that we talked about with the ways in which the poetry and the radio stories support or aid each other’s, you know, existence or get in the way of each other’s existence, I do feel like I just, I spend so much time trying to make sense that it’s hard to stop making sense, or to unlatch the trapdoor to my subconscious and dream. It’s like that door kind of rusts a little more shut. And they’re both—right?—they’re both sonic media. People don’t think of poetry that way, but it is, you know, I mean it’s sound. And so, poetry and radio are, they’re really born to be sibling art forms. But it’s not thought of that way at all by radio programmers anyway. I dunno if I ever told you this, when I was at WBUR in Boston, years and years ago, I think Franz Wright won the Pulitzer Prize. I wanna say he won the Pulitzer for Walking to Martha’s Vineyard, I think have that title right. And, you know, he was the son of James Wright who also won the Pulitzer Prize. And he was local. So, you know, I found a recording of him reading and I was like, this is easy, easy to put on Morning Edition, easy, easy thing to do. Wrote the lead, you know, isolated the poem, gave it to the people running the show. And then later that morning, the news director comes in and was like, “Yeah, when I heard that come on, after the first 20 seconds, I was like, fade it, fade it!” That bummed me out and taught me something about trying to get poetry on the radio. You know what I mean?

Helena de Groot: Yeah. I mean, you know, the thing is also like, I’m more drawn to narrative poems than non-narrative poems. It’s just easier to interview people about stories, as you well know. And of course, I fight this impulse the whole time and go with poetry that, like, gives me a feeling or a vibe or images, but I have no idea like where is up and where is down. I try to go with those also, because I think one of the reasons why I interview poets is because it’s the most incomprehensible art form to me, and I like that about it, you know? I like that it challenges my know-it-all tendencies, you know? But again, like, then we talk about it. And then I try to figure out, who are you? And where do you come from and why do you write like this? And you know, what was your relationship with your mom? Or you know, I mean, you know what I’m doing. We are just pulled towards narrative. So, okay. So here’s my basic question. Can you tell me what it is that you need poetry for? Like, what can a poem do that a story usually cannot?

Sean Cole: That’s such a great question. I think that with stories you’re trying to make sense of something that happened. And find the meaning in it. And poems, it’s a different thing. It’s making me think things that I never would have and feel things that I never would have otherwise. You know, like I’m thinking of this Joel Oppenheimer poem that was, yeah, I mean that, I guess, I’m belying everything I’m saying to you because that, it’s quite a narrative poem. I’m just gonna read it to you because I am, I don’t expect you to put it on the show or anything, but. And it’s like a poem I think that wouldn’t survive our moment. I just think it would probably offend too many people. Or maybe it wouldn’t. It’s long. It’s not that long. It’s called “Sirventes on a Sad Occurrence.”

(READS POEM)

It is spring. I. I can walk lightly down the stairs, even on the way to work, and that’s a gain. I swing my hat widely, not cavalierly, but Remington, the old West, the three Mexican cowboys coming home off the planes. The sun shines even in my room and my windows are open. The pretty girls await me in the street, their coats open or no coats at all.

And on her way up the stairs, an old lady loses her control. I will write against that which is in us to make age and embarrassment in the season of coming alive. Old lady, if at this point and place in time and all the world’s area, you cannot forget that small muscle if because of the fineness of the day, your daughter older than my mother says, mama, come sit outside.

All winter, you’ve sat in the sun, the air, come mama outside. You’ll sit and you go painfully the one flight down and sit and then come up and halfway up. Don’t tell Mrs. Stern, the daughter screams. I’ll be back right away. All clean. Don’t tow. What can she possibly tell old woman? That you are old. That you have had your children.

That they have had theirs. They theirs, and you are still here. Your world still exists. Where does she fit in? As if there weren’t already shit in the world and you invented it? What further indignities to allow besides inventing shit and on top of it, As you clung to the banister at the top step almost around 15 feet from your door to face, me suddenly coming down from one flight up my hat, no longer swinging, but over my head, over my thin bearded face, my God, the moan.

Then even your daughter scared by it. I thought you were dying till I found out the truth. Me a tall, skinny, bearded eyeglass, hollow eyed, acetic, Jew, big hat. You were back in Poland. But I am no rabbi and it is no sin. I am not the SSID or simple Ashkenazi bu knew and danced before around the Psalms went high to God.

David, I am not. There’s no cause for alarm. For the alarm. I’m so far removed from it. All I could think was old lady. I wish I knew how to say a pesto in Yiddish and couldn’t. Old lady. It’s spring. I love you great grandma. This is a natural act. Why will you fear me for it? I see each day more shit than you could ever dream of making.

Screw your daughter. Let Mrs. Stern watch out for her own steps. I’m just standing here waiting for you to pass. Too late now for me to go back up the stairs. I have just discovered what the fact is much too late and will stand quietly and moving past it later after you have been able to pass me to your door.

Me going down the steps, a warmth that offers up. Steaming like any simple load or cow of cow or horseshit and the clumsy Kleenex streaks where your daughter had started wiping Christ. This is the east side. Let it sit there. There is room for it. Need for it. Labor does not create wealth. Wealth does not create wealth.

Shit creates wealth. Old lady. Old lady, you.

(GETS CHOKED UP)

Hmm. You are the creator spirit though. Your tits hang shrunken in your wrapper though. Your man’s long dead.

I had a woman once had need to pee each time she came. The bed was wet with it, but she had less needled woman than you of simple love that would allow such mystery and act. This daughter then suckled, like we say at that long dry breast too long ago to give you back your due. Her pants were full too long ago to let yours drop today.

(CRYING)

Let it go. Old woman, let it go. Shit on it. Let it go. This is the east side. This is Park Avenue. This is your son. The doctor’s Riverside Drive side. Let it go this much. You’re entitled to this much. Even I can grant you, who worries if he farts too loud in his own silent room who pisses to the edge of the bowl?

It shouldn’t make no noise. Who like so many of us wakes each morning to either constipation or the runs this much. I can grant you shit on the stairs of my house. You are old enough for that. Re remember the little boys they have not yet learned how to piss. They stand at the curb between two cars.

Their feet spread, embraced, they arch over into the street. They fight each other distance. The pride show offs. Why can’t you shit that easily on these steps? Old lady. I am sorry.

And it is spring. And where did you think the flowers will come from? The rain and the pretty girls, if not from making love and the shit itself, if not from eating and the broken noses and the black eyes and scars, if not from fighting. This is the east side. Guns crack. People snort their noses full of life.

And you are dying because you shot upon these steps and you were faced with me. Old lady, act your age.

(CRYING)

Sorry. I’m sorry. Yeah, so I don’t know. I guess, I don’t know if that’s any kind of answer to your question. But that poem just, it destroys me, I guess. It’s just, it’s just such a much more direct injection. It’s not a train of thought, it’s a sudden burst of thought. It’s 30 thoughts at once, all on top of each other competing, and, and whatever. I mean, I’m trying to make sense of it and still answer your question at the same time, but I just wanna say it’s just, that is just so fucking moving to me and, you know, and obviously, like, mom stuff, really, mom stuff and old woman stuff and embarrassment of the body stuff, (PAUSES) I can’t believe he wrote that poem. I just feel like he had an experience where his upstairs neighbor shit on the stairs and that’s what he made of it? That’s what poetry’s for. (PAUSES) Oh shit. That poor woman.

Helena de Groot: Oh God, Sean, I’m sorry I didn’t listen before and now I listened and now I’m crying because you are crying. (CRYING) And you’re right, I can’t believe that someone wrote an ecstatic poem, which I think it is, about an old lady losing control of her bowels. I love too that he just said she “lost control” without any qualification. And you think he’s, you think maybe she peed, maybe, and you’re sort of grateful for the euphemism, and then he is like, fuck your euphemism. Let me tell you exactly what we are, what we all become. There’s nothing dignified about old age. And yet, you know, the glory of being alive and her world still being there. That line. Yeah. Anyway, thank you for reading that poem. And, yeah, you’re right. Only a poem could. Ah, okay. Bye, Sean.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: It’s my birthday today. It’s my 40th birthday. So yeah, I don’t feel weird about being 40. I have to say, I have been actually saying that I was 40 for the past year, because I think 39 is such a fake age. Like when you say 39, I assume people think you’re 40. And you’re just trying to appease yourself, your panic about getting older. So I have been 40 for a year, and now I’m actually 40, so I feel like nothing special happened. Yeah. Speaking of being 40, I met up with another radio friend of mine yesterday, Rachel James. I don’t know if you know her. Anyway, we were talking about turning 40, and getting older, and death, and all that, you know. (LAUGHS) I mean, no, I think, no, I was talking about my interview, because, you know, this lady that I interviewed this morning. And she was like, “Oh, so, you know, what does she write about?” So, you know, one of the things she writes about, is, you know, time, which is great, because when someone talks about time, we can talk about death, which is, like, my favorite topic, because it’s the only topic, you know, in a way. And I just, I caught myself sounding very dark or glib or both. So I said to Rachel, like, “Oh, I guess that’s middle age talking.” And she said, “Well,”—and I’d never heard this expression before, that’s why it struck me—"Well, as they say, you’re over the hill now.” And just this image of being in this pastoral landscape with a gentle sloping hill and I am now on the downslope, it just seemed suddenly so perfectly peaceful to me, and I love it. And yes, we talked about the indignities of old age and the terror of knowing that you’re gonna die and the suffering of whatever is the thing that’s killing you. And I, obviously, am not looking forward to any of that. But I think I’m fine with not being young anymore. I mean, I know for a fact that I’m fine with that. I feel, like, relief of some sort. You know, like when you’ve gone to a party and you were all dressed nice and you know, it’s cool to dress nice and go to a party, but then you come home and you get to kick off those shoes and just, like, take a shower, put something on that smells like lavender, go make a tea, hang out on the couch, like, oh, that is what, what I go to any party for (LAUGHING) is just for like the relief of then being able to come home from it. And that’s kind of how I feel. Do you feel that there are things that you enjoy now that when you were younger you didn’t? Or you didn’t as much?

Sean Cole: Hey! Wow, so much to respond to. And yeah, what do I enjoy more now than when I was younger? It’s funny, Helena, first of all, you are not old. (LAUGHS) You are—I know it’s different for women than men. I know that when you turn 40, you’re like, “I’m 40.” I’ve experienced it, I know that. You’re not old, and you’re not in middle age. I mean, I guess technically you’re middle aged, but you’re not middle aged. You’re 40. You’re 40. Like, it’s for—it’s young. I remember looking in the car window when I was filling in at that show, The Story. It was called The Story at WNC. I was filling in for Dick Gordon, and I go to my car. It’s the summertime. It’s blaringly hot in the parking lot. I’m the last car in the parking lot because I always work late. And I look in my car window, and I was 40. And I was like, wow, I didn’t think that’s what 40 looked like. But of course it’s what 40 looked like, because I’m 40 and I look like that. But when I look back at pictures of me when I was 40 and 42 and whatnot, I’m like, you young motherfucker! Like I had all my fucking hair. Almost. Not really, but I sort of did. And I was like a lot, I think I was a lot hotter, then. So, that now established, when you say, like, you go to parties to come home or whatever, I’m, like, the opposite. I just like, I want a fuckin’ party. You know, like, I’m like an emotional Benjamin Button. I’m like, totally going backwards in terms of like, like I think that that is a reasonable thing to feel, what you describe, of like going to parties just so that you can have the joy of going home and coming home and putting on comfortable pants and making tea and like putting something lavender that smells nice on and taking a bath and like all, and all those things that might fall under the category of self-care. I don’t know the meaning of the words self-care. I just, I wake up in order to party. I just want to, I want to go to the party and stay at the party. And I don’t ever want to go home. And when I do come home, I don’t, I mean, I’m so, I don’t, what am I, what am I doing not putting on different pants? I just bought two pairs of linen pajama bottoms because I was like, all of my lighter pajama bottoms have been destroyed. And now I have two pair of very comfortable linen pajama bottoms that I do not change into when I get home, because I am a masochist. You’re also so funny, because you are the first person that I’ve ever heard of who (LAUGHS) who hears the phrase “over the hill” and thinks of it in a positive light. That is so wonderfully European of you. But yeah, I mean, when you describe it that way, like a gentle sloping down, that’s, that’s a riot, actually. And I can’t wait to tell other people that in a loving way about you. Anyhow, I was gonna tell you something, I don’t know, I guess I don’t know, I think that probably, what do I enjoy more now that I’m older than I did when I was younger? (PAUSES) I don’t know. Maybe nothing. That’s sad. I don’t know, man. Uh, I don’t mean to end on a bummer note, but yeah, I think that’s the truth. I don’t, I don’t know, I can’t, I don’t think there is anything. I mean, I guess, I, you know, I love my friends so much. And I love spending time with them. And I think I, I understand more now how lucky I am. And I, and I’m very grateful for all the great people in my life. And I’m very lucky in that way. At the same time I feel so lonely, now that my parents are dead, I’m lucky that I have those people. And I love when you said that death is the only topic. You’re fucking right. It is. It is. Fuck everything else. It’s the only, I mean, it’s the only thing we all know is going to happen. Is there anything else that we all know is going to happen? Bowel movements. But that’s only if we eat. How about that for cheery? Okay, Helena. Let’s hang out. We could maybe go to one of our houses. I’m starting to finally get shit going on this end. I got the wall painted. Gonna get some furniture. Uh, like that. Okay, Mwah. Bye-bye.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: Sean Cole is the author of one full-length collection, titled After These Messages, and three chapbooks, Itty City, By the Author, and One Train. He’s also on staff at This American Life, where makes many of my favorite stories. His writing is just so good and dark and sweet and him. Not to mention funny! Even the story he made after his mother died. That one is titled “Call Me Maybe”. Sean has also won awards for his radio stories, including a Peabody nomination and a Gold Award for Best Documentary in the Third Coast / Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition, 2021 for his story “Time Bandit”. You can find that and every other of his stories on the This American Life website.

The music in this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions. And if you are a regular This American Life listener, you may have recognized one Blue Dot track they use all the time, “Lemon and Melon”—consider it an homage. I also want to thank a few people: my editor at the Poetry Foundation, Jeremy Lybarger, for giving me the space and encouragement to play around, the brilliant Brendan Baker for helping me with mixing and mastering, and of course, Sean Cole, my friend, for entertaining me for months, for trusting me through the process, and for giving the end result his blessing.

I’m Helena de Groot and this was Poetry Off the Shelf. Thank you for listening.