5.17 What I Get Wrong

Announcement

Hey, everybody, just jumping if quickly before we get started today to tell you that here at the end of the first full season of Literary Nomads I’ve prepared a listener survey, a chance for you to give me some solid feedback on what you like about the podcast, what hasn’t gone so well, how I can fit your needs better, and what you’d like to see added or dropped, stuff like that. Fill it out between now and July 8 of 2025 and get some cool free stuff and be part of a giveaway. There’s a link in the show notes. Wait, are you listening after July 8? No worries–I’ll bet there’s another survey going on right now! Just head over to the podcast website link, also in the show notes, to check! And thanks in advance for making this podcast better!

5.17 What I Get Wrong

Reflecting on the Wrong

I hope you folks will indulge me today, because as we close out our first Literary Nomads Journey together (what I am therefore calling Journey 5, because that makes sense–I’ll explain in a bit)–but as we close out our first Literary Nomads journey, I’m feeling like I should practice a bit of what I preach. 

As readers, as teachers, as students, we’ve heard over and over again the need for reflection time at the end of our projects, time to stop and reflect and see what went right and what perhaps did not go so well. This way, we can build on what we did well and revise the parts that didn’t. And if you’re a bit like me, you know this is important, and you’ve made various vows to do just that: pause and reflect. But then–oh, but then–always but then–time and demands being what they are–we push on because the next thing is on top of us. “Ah!” we say, “I kind of know what went wrong and what I need to do for next time, so that’ll have to do for now, I guess. Rinse and repeat. 

My classroom had a big poster of the International Baccalaureate Design Cycle on the wall, and I remember it having this “Reflection” time committed to about one quarter of the circle, 25% of the total project time or resources. But since this is one episode of the 17 we’ve done this journey, I guess I’ll have to settle for something like 6% of the time. (Or, if you add in the production hours, our brief time here for reflection will be closer to, um, carry the decimal, round that off . . . Point 49 percent! That’ll have to do for now, I guess. 

But more seriously, reflection makes us better, right? At least, so I’ve heard. Theoretically. And I want to be as transparent as I can be with you all about what I’m about, what I see here, and what I want to get accomplished as we grow the podcast ahead of us and expand our discussion and exploring of readings and idea. What’s successful and what isn’t?

And–brace yourself–I’m going to give you all a chance to help, too, to reflect with me, on what’s working for you and what isn’t, what you’d like more or less of. After all, this whole enterprise is–at least mostly–for you. In the Show Notes today you’ll see a link for a listener survey, and I hope you’ll take a couple of minutes to drop me some thoughts. But I’ll talk about that more a bit later.

My experience of doing things for others without much reflection includes a moment I still have not forgotten, and I can viscerally still feel its results. Back in my earlier classroom days, some time in the earlier 1990s, I think, I had a classroom of students who for whatever reason did not mark schooling as their higher goal, and English was near the bottom of the motivation pile. So when we had a hot day and I had cracked open a window to let some air into the sweltering space, it wasn’t long before a hornet flew into the room to investigate. 

Chaos. Screams, teens diving under desks, and a few facing it down in early tests of their machismo. I settled them down and told them I would take care of it, since certainly until I did no learning would get done. I could not have been more wrong: learning definitely got done.

I turned off the classroom lights so that the hornet would be drawn towards the brighter windows. Then I opened some paper up into a kind of stiff fan, preparing to usher our guest back out through the open window. And we waited for him to make his way towards me. 

Here’s what I remember. I was looking up at the ceiling at him, and he was looking right back at me, considering the open window below. My right hand was on the window handle, ready to close it when he left, my left hand had the “fan” of paper to kind of scoop him through when he got close, and I looked up, my mouth open in anticipation. In my memory he turned towards me, hovered in suspense, and then shot quickly downwards, flying directly into my open mouth. The students screamed. The hornet stopped at the inside of my lower lip and dug in, stinging and clawing savagely, raking my vulnerable flesh with little claws and bites. Well, at least that’s what I remember. I dropped everything, reached into my mouth with my hand, ripped him from my lip, and threw him out the window. I shut the window and turned to discover that what I thought had been student screams in surprise and sympathy were actually screams of laughter. 

Quick Non-reflection Lesson: When dealing with venomous adversaries, best to keep your mouth closed. My jaw still drops open when encountering awe.

Yes, a mismatch. The planned English lesson–a topic so important, of course, that I could not recall it now if you paid me–abandoned. The strategy to escort the hornet out through the windows apparently a laughable failure. But a lesson was still learned. I can say this: In the roughly 30 years since, I have not been stung again inside my mouth. 

Hunh. Interesting that I began our journey with a professor’s slap and am closing it with a bee attack. Two memories of pain. One I received because I was correct (in my definition of ironyA "deflection of expectation," where words, situation, or pe... More) and the other because I was incorrect (in knowing the devious intent of my little yellow adversary). Lesson? Pain is inevitable. So is embarrassment.

So let’s embrace that a bit as you indulge me and I work through what the plan was and what it has become, what we did and why we did it, and how we can do it better still. If we’re lucky, we’ll pick up something to read along the way, something perhaps more valuable than Clive Barker’s “Candyman” short story, “The Forbidden.” Speaking of bees in the mouth, did you know that Tony Todd, who played Candyman in the horror film, actually had real bees crawling in his mouth for those scenes? He said: “Everything that’s worth making has to involve some sort of pain.”  The dude chose to do it! And while I’m not sure that I buy into his ideas of creation involving pain, I do know that he and I are different. In his case, he chose to let those bees in there for the movie. I didn’t choose my experience. It was instead . . . . meant to bee.

Intro Theme 

This is Literary Nomads, where we wander through literature and language, near and far.

I’m Steve Chisnell, and I promise not to bee-little the work in front of us.

Nuts & Bolts

So, let’s see. In my notes here, I have–it looks like–three categories of reflection to consider. One is the production or technical side of the podcast, one is the interpretation stuff, and one is just general levels of intimidation. Hmm.

Now I imagine that most of you don’t put together podcasts, and you didn’t sign up for a discussion of audiotech, so I’ll keep this part brief, and I’ll try to link it to some of the foundation beliefs I have about reading.

Let’s back into this a little from the language arts/teaching side of reading. Reading writing speaking thinking doing: For me, these are fairly inseparable since all depend upon the reading and interpreting of symbols. Yes, “doing,” too, when it is anything but wholly manual labor or motivated by intentional strategy. One of my mentors in college, Richard Wright–no, not that one–would tell me “If you can write, you can think” and “If you can think, you can write.” Now I argued with him for hours and hours on that second one, monopolizing his office hours, I suspect, but just when I thought I had him cornered in an argument, he’d say, “Hmm hm hmmm! Steven, Wright is always right.” Well. I don’t know even now how he imagined these terms, but I’ve come to think of reading and writing quite broadly, as acts of symbol use, of composition and of interpretation, though most still use these pretty exclusively for exercises locked onto paper. 

Okay. So if this is so, even for Richard Wright’s sake of arguing it more, the big question that follows for Literary Nomads: then how does a podcast format follow this integration? Most podcasts on books and such out there focus on the joy and love of reading, or the craft of writing, or the effectiveness of speaking, or things to do. I haven’t found any that talk about all of these as being an inseparable part of how we communicate and think as humans

In the classroom of course, we divide these up into artificial closets of skills. The “language arts teacher” has a wider range of possibilities because the English world understands (mostly kind of) this synthesis of skills. In the end though, most high schools and universities, state diploma policies, and the like, differentiate classes and credits, separating writing from reading, speaking from career skills studies. In the end, they often wind up teaching the language skills for that niche (how to write an essay, how to read a poem, how to use gestures in a speech, how to make a sales pitch). The thinking skills themselves, the work of interpretation of reading, is usually left as a marginal topic. Instead, teachers integrate taxonomic models like Bloom’s or Toulmin, or offers students practical strategies for interpretation like RED, SOAPSTone, TP-CASTT, TWIST and awkwardly, SLLIDDTOP. Yeah, teachers are really into acronyms. But the point is, for most of us who moved through classrooms and learned our language skills, we rarely talked about what it meant to think, the ways and why of interpreting symbols across our activities. Only in the International Baccalaureate programs did I see any direct effort to address this with a class that stood somewhat apart and blanketing all of the others called Theory of Knowledge (um, ToK). Even here, though, many folks teaching ToK boil it down to practical applications of skills for encounters. Something like, “Okay, if you see an illustration from history, here are the three best terms to use to discuss it which will offer you the highest chance to earn points on this rubric.” I loved teaching ToK and resisted this kind of toolbox for grades approach as much as I could. But in a podcast, I lack almost every resource I ever used in that classroom: here I can talk in only one direction (at least so far); there the students would sit down at a large table with me, and I had placed a poem, a botany chart, and a raw fig before them and watched them work, focusing on their approaches and strategies to integrating. 

The closest I ever came to integrating everything powerfully was when teaching Model United Nations, a kind of open-ended debate experience where students took on global topics in the roles of various nations. Significantly, when they really “got it,” this dynamic process for thinking and working with symbols, we literally traveled the world to meet and interrogate political leaders and representatives in places like China, Italy, Ireland, Costa Rica, and the US Department of State in 2003 while it was contemplating its invasion of Iraq. Here’s the important takeaway: there is no sphere of community in the world which is meaningfully denied us when we have these skills. As often as not, my high school students recognized that they were level participants with the folks making serious decisions, sometimes exceeding them. 

So as challenging as it is to find the means to bring all of these skills together, as therefore unlike as that makes this podcast from others in reading and writing, its more awkward connections and shifting topic approaches will likely remain in some form. But I’m always struggling with the balancing act, there. How am I doing?

More Bolts Than Nuts

On the technical side, too, I need to improve. My microphone technique is something I’m constantly working on: to be more clear, to slow my pacing, to improve the sound, to reduce the sibilance (those damn whistling “s” sounds). 

I am trying to make sure podcast chapters are consistent, that each has images and links, that transcripts are accurate and easy to find, but I have yet to find a clean way to attach a transcript or closed-captions to episodes short of spending much more money on a service to do it for me. 

I’m also working to index or sort the various paths we travel, the skills and vocabulary and other concepts we touch upon in each episode so we can make them easier to find and, ultimately, to follow the podcast in a direction listeners choose. For instance, if they want to learn about all things related to narrators in fiction or the philosophy of existentialismA broad name for a wide range of philosophies. Emphasis is o... More, there is one episode in Journey 2, two in Journey 3, and one in Journey 7 that they can listen to. That would make the podcast kind of a choose-your-own-journey or course of study. I haven’t found a tool or method for doing this that I like, yet, but I have to get it started before too many episodes get done!

Still a lot to learn. And to that learning, I wrote in some detail in a recent Waywords newsletter how many hours I spend in creating each episode. In short, too many. I’m always looking for ways to slim that time down, and I’m spotting a few more, but I’m open to ideas. I do know I spend too much time hunting for nonsense sound clips which pop up in the episodes as I balance the content with some juxtaposed humor, and I can’t help free associating sometimes as I listen to what I said during the editing process.

All this to say, I don’t have all my podcast creation skills down the way I want, yet, not even the structure of the episodes in building ideas completely (what educators call scaffolding), so all of this means that you’ll see some variations and changes in approach along the way as I experiment and try new things!

But that’s all the production side of the work and not really what I want to talk about it like today.

Interpretation & Intimidation

So I know that this is not a typical podcast in terms of genre: literature, writing, and the like. I’ve been told completely contradictory advice on this: first, that other podcasts do what works, what listeners want, and therefore it makes sense to follow those approaches. Let’s call them formulas. In all the reading and listening I’ve done about podcast building (and that’s a ton), nearly every source has templates, formulas, for how to build episodes. I resist these like I resist artificial essay formulas. 

The other advice I hear is that building something unique, niching down, is critical. Well, I’ve definitely done that, at least in my approaches to the readings we have. 

I haven’t done much in the way of interviews, and that isn’t because I don’t like having guests on the podcast but because so far, I’m still building a direction or attitude that makes their presence valuable to me and to listeners. There are no end to folks wanting to be podcast guests–it’s a whole industry, it seems–but it’s nearly always because they have a product they are promoting, not just because they have something unique and valuable to contribute to the conversation. I have a few I’m lining up in the future, but I have no plans to make this an interview show. And I have a pretty solid commitment not to make anything here a low-key sales pitch, so definitely I will shun ads. Yes, they’re money, but they’re not that much money, not for the misery they cause people’s ears. If I promote anything here (from book titles to companies), know that I am receiving no compensation for it at all, not even affiliate fees. I talk it up (or down) because this is my opinion of its value. Period.

But where all these disparate advice-givers agree is that I should only do what I enjoy. Nailed it! I am learning a ton as I do this (and I hope you are): I have made a personal vow to make sure every listener discovers at least one new idea to think about in every episode. Yes, I come pre-packaged to this podcast job with some reading and teaching experience; but so much of what we talk about is new to me, as well: the background approaches to Horace, the historical backdrop to Marvell, the entire Star Trek fan-film enterprise, the nuances between Epicureanism, Stoicism, and existentialismA broad name for a wide range of philosophies. Emphasis is o... More (those last two we’ve barely touched, yet). These are literary discoveries that inform my other projects and our view ahead. They’re starting to train us what to look for. 

But for all that, I know I have not satisfied some listeners, yet. Some feedback I’ve received suggests that people want more usables, products, tools that they can apply in their study or professional lives. These requests seem to be made mostly from teachers and students who are working for ends, measurables. I get it.  And this is on me, but every time I start numbering or making a bulleted list in an episode, I get uncomfortable, even while I know it’s making it easy on listeners.

Interpretation, the ever-changing act and process of reading and interpreting symbols: it’s not a deliverable, and this is an important point. Reading is not a static, measurable act much as we might wish to make it one. Well, then, what good is all this? Why listen? Why be literary nomads if I’m not going to give listeners exactly what they want?

And this is a tough question, and I’m definitely ambivalent about it, especially as a teacher for 35 years. I recognize that the world demands measurables and I did that, too, as much as I needed to. But I’m going to suggest that that’s what we call yeomans work. No offense intended to the hard-working farmers and royal servants of early England–I don’t want to be classist–but a lot of the practical working models that assist with reading-for-understanding are already out there, and please please trust me, the world needs no more of them and probably fewer would do fine. Instead, we’re working a bit further along the critical thinking path, and the measurable catch-phrases and acronyms for these processes. And, lest we forget the valuable lesson: ensigns and yeomen are always among the first to die namelessly in Star Trek episodes.   

So let’s be real for a minute: identifying the theme of “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is kind of useless. But identifying a new encounter with an internal vision in the works of Kang or Everett? and how we personally might use that in dialogue with our peers? Yep. That’s when we start getting to interpretation and importance of meaning. The rest of it, the yeomans work, will have gone before, or follows later when we add new experiences. To me, it is strange and unnerving to think we can’t always see that importance of an ever-adapting practice in critical thought and application, so caught up we are in traditional models of education, of study, of business. Or, we do see it, but are at a loss as to how to grow it in ourselves or in others. How do we actually get ourselves to be better thinkers? The short answer: be better readers.

Unpopular opinion:  teachers, the standardized deliverables of language arts practice are the least important thing we do. Students, the tests are less important than the questions you have of them; this does not mean to dismiss them, but to use them as platforms and places for inquiry, for questions and challenges. In other words, yes, I am asking us to read the tests too, just as we would any literature that works upon us. Passing the test is yeoman’s work, requiring study and focus; it’s honest work, but it has no lasting impact on anything but an equally invalid student growth measurement for the teacher’s record. Successful adults–and by these I mean happy and content people doing meaningful things in their lives–have never had anything but a quasi-correlation to their school test scores. Nor to their GPAs. Nor to their SAT and ACT scores. Study after study suggests that the most important causal factor for that adult meaningful success is positive and constructive engagement in extra-curricular programs. In other words, for those in the back, successful adults are created from experiences outside of the classroom.

This is hard medicine for many, especially for those like me who spent their primary careers teaching. And to be equally clear, I have never blamed teachers for this mismatch: the forces working on schools are powerful and long-standing and have a lot to do with a structural inertia. But now we’re really running far afield. Sorry about that. Another thing I do is wander a bit, . . . but . . . 

Wandering, like nomads, like people who work well in acts of bricolage, are what we’re after, those who seek connections, draw disparate topics inward to understand their interrelations, break and forge and reshape them. We can’t rebuild our communities until we can understand where they’re poorly built. Did you know that the Japanese kanji writing system, built around 3000 years ago, one constructed by and first used exclusively for wealthy males, combines the symbols for “female” and “hand” to make the word “slave”? We have to read carefully.

And how dare I use an unusual word like “bricolage” to describe our thinking and not pause to talk about its meaning? Dang, I can be mean. . . .

Okay, okay. Let’s assume you are with me, and we agree that standardized measurable examinations of our skills are at best merely foundations for the larger work, if this podcast isn’t going to just out-and-out tell us what the poem means, what are we supposed to do? How do I know our interpretations are right? Or, for that matter, how does Steve on this podcast know that his are right?  

Warning: More uncertainty ahead . . . 

Getting It Right?

First, I do ascribe to the axiom that “all reading is misreading.” In short, this means that the Conduit metaphor is false; writing and reading directly with total accuracy is impossible because language is slippery and ambiguous no matter what we do. And so are readers. This is pretty re-assuring, though, because it means that we don’t have to demand of ourselves that we have some “final answer” that can be checked off; it also means that we can come back later and re-evaluate, re-read, re-vise. We don’t have to be–and should not be–offended when someone else reads something different. 

And that’s because, second, there isn’t a single right answer to reading and literature, not even just for ourselves. It only creates discomfort when we have minds that have been trained or educated to seek simple and concrete right answers. In other words, the dynamic power of shifting interpretations is only upsetting to us because we have been trained poorly to ask for the cookie, for the closed response. And don’t get all high and mighty about math and science: those two fields of study, when pushed into their meaningful uses, are alive with the indefinite and the imaginative, with endless inquiry and re-examination as motivators, with theoreticals as often as not in real tensionAs a literary term, I often use this in place of "conflict" ... More with the physical world they seek to model. Cool.

But third, “being right” about literature has never been the goal. This expectation is the symptom of treating readings as if they were arithmetic, of getting deliverables, of takeaways in the business world, of grades in our schooling, of a utilitarian system for information to be “banked” for later transactions. And we’ve already talked a bit how the utilitarian view of happiness depends upon some questionable ethics.

In schools, students will often pose the question, “When am I gonna use this in the real world?” One of my more thoughtful colleagues sadly would respond to this with, “This is the real world.” He lamented that students saw schools as somehow separate from the career spaces, and he was right, they do see them as separate, but he never seemed to wonder about whether this “carry-out fast food” model, this transactional approach to education itself should be questioned. The student challenge of “When will I use this?” is not a bad question and it’s a good sign that students are becoming conscious of wanting to be themselves valuable as adults; teachers should be unafraid of answering it. But if by real world we mean a world of right answers, transactions, and deliverables, we must both dismiss this as a goal, and resist attempting to justify literature to meet it. We cannot, must not, “dumb down” literature to deliverables. 

And just to reiterate: What is the goal?  To read, to think, to question, to connect, and to do it again and again. It is the process that itself is the goal, itself is the thinking, itself is the engagement in the world in a critical way. So, unpopular opinion: what we read is less important than what we do with what we read. So no, I won’t stop talking about ancient literature and traditional classic literature, but no, I won’t stop talking about science fiction and anime and fan fiction and, um, Drake, along the way. 

All of this is inherent in my struggles on the deliverables question for podcast episodes. If you ever see a title here that reads something like “Eight Essentials for Your Insights,” know that I am absolutely living in a state of satire.   

All of that said, I am now going to turn almost completely around, and promise the opposite, because I have listeners who want these, because dammit, they still need to live in that “real world” of measurables, no matter how noble and lofty their literary philosophy. I am resolving this next season to start to put together more deliverables, guides and resources, even lesson plans for teachers, for those who might benefit from them.  I will probably be working about a season behind in creating these. In other words, I’ll be putting together resources for Marvell and carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More while we go about listening to Journey 6, and that may be my pattern for a while.  

How do you get them? Two ways: first, you can find most on the WaywordsStudio website at the journey page related to the episodes you’ve heard. In other words, if you want some carpe diemSimply translated as "Pluck" or "Seize" "the Day," it is the... More resources, go to Journey 5 for Andrew Marvell “To His Coy Mistress.”  If and when we circle back to Andrew Marvell in the future, I will add more resources to that same page.

The second way to get resources is to get the WaywordsStudio newsletter, where I offer resources, links, readings, updates, and other behind-the scenes-information that I never talk about on the podcast. There’s a link to subscribe to the free newsletter in the show notes. 

Finally, I am working on a glossary that is slowly emerging on the website, as well, containing a number of the specialized terms I use and their meanings for us while we read and think.

What’s the TLDL (Too Long Didn’t Listen) of this chapter: The episodes are messy because they keep connecting seemingly different pieces of reading to our common goal of reading and thinking deeply, and that’s not likely to change. But I will start to offer more resources which I hope will help folks in their work with texts.

The Wrong Of It

Okay, okay, so if there is no right answer and it’s all practice reading and re-reading, is there a wrong? Oh, yes.

Wrong is when we make connections but don’t carefully consider the text we claim to interpret. Wrong is when we sell ourselves short. Wrong is when we lean on Authority or AI or Google or teachers for answers. Wrong is when we don’t re-turn, re-consider, revise our thinking and writing. Wrong is when we keep our thoughts to ourselves.

Confession: I am often wrong.

Do I consider the text carefully? Am I exhaustive, detailed, etc.? Well, yes, in some ways, I do move further than most online guides. But more is always possible. I have not read all of Andrew Marvell, nor even all of his poetry. I have not read his biographies, well one. Sure, I joined the Andrew Marvell Society in preparing for this last season, but I did not avail myself of their conferences or the expertise of their members too much. P.S. I am not giving up my membership. Also, I did not learn Latin to discuss Horace, which leaves me with translation challenges. I only looked at a single slice of Bellow’s novel Seize the Day, when so much more could have been said about it. I could have done more into the whole Star Trek fanaverse. And we barely talked of Wilde, Herrick, or Rilke or so many others! We’ll just have to circle back again later. Ever notice how a trail you’ve walked a lot keeps showing you something new? Yeah, that.

And also, I do sell myself short too often. I could do quite a bit more with what we’ve considered, One reason I don’t is time. We never have enough. Another is focus. Zooming in means narrowing the vision. Broadening out means less depth. How exhaustive must we be in making meaning? This depends upon what we want to learn, and personally I always keep that door open to return for another look. Cuz I know that literature, like that familiar trail, keeps giving us more to find. (As a side note for teachers, don’t lean too heavily on this “Teacher answer is the authoritative answer” stuff; don’t be a master of content–it’s an impossible ask, anyway: be a master of process, of uncertainty and of learning.)

On a similar note, then, yes, I do read other Authorities. You can, too. If you have not been to the Waywords Studio website ( waywordsstudio.com,)  you will find there a complete bibliography of my source material sorted per episode. But there is a difference between using research and relying upon research. Reliance thwarts the reading process, which is our goal. So long as we ask for objective measurements for our reading, so long as we expect a right answer, we fool ourselves into believing we can find those answers from some authority. and so we go to AI and other online sources and (back in my day), books, etc.  If we understand that the goal is the process of reading and interpreting, of thinking, then we are in a good place for approaching research. Why do I research? For one, to be sure I haven’t missed a key idea, one that I should be inquiring about. For instance the Horace rhythm issue which was brand new learning for me; so I learned about this notion of emphasis in Roman poetry, but I did not find interpretations which quite accosted that particularly rape-y emphasis as we had come to understand it. And I also research to see what hasn’t been asked or written about yet. That gives me room to explore new territory. More, I research the work of other critics to learn from their approach and practice to the text, and even for models to organize my ideas. Finally, and perhaps as important as any of the others, I like learning from others.

But do I take all of this and then revise my thinking?  The meaning of revision is to re-see, to see again. It means rereading, rewriting, rethinking, often with new eyes and new minds on our texts. But again, revision requires time, and time is always short. For me this has been very difficult. Few others in the field are now in my direct connection to talk to. This has been true since I left grad school in 1992 and shared an office with wonderful people who loved this kind of examination. I still miss them, and I’ve been told more than a dozen times over the years that I should not go to the public schools to teach, that the best discussion was happening where they were. I am delighted to say that this is not the case, but, I’d be lying if I said finding people for the kind of discussion I’ve been outlining here has been easy. What I have done is as a teacher, use my classes as a group of collaborators. I like to see my classes ideally as building communities where we could talk about ideas openly, freely, critically, without consequence. It’s called building a safe environment where readers can take risks as they develop their reading. And there are precious few of these around. Hence, Waywords.

But am I keeping some thinking to myself? Always. Some are ideas for secret projects for later, brewing ideas that haven’t yet formed, some are not yet worthy to share. But I do reviews of most every book-length thing I read, I write frequently about what I’ve read, I talk in workshops and book groups, I have this podcast,  and I’m pursuing some of the other ideas I mentioned in the Having Hard Conversations episode. I also post essays on my blog, and fiction, and any other odd project I can think of. Why? To inform my action, to motivate me, to help me understand other people’s ways of seeing.

So, yes, in the ideal process of reading and meaning-making, I’ve lapsed in a few key areas. But this is the time I make to reflect on those choices, what time and resources are available to me, and if I am spending my time in smart and fulfilling ways. Could be better. 

A Bit of Daring 

But not gonna lie (geez, sounds so lame when I say that–excellent), this is still hard, not least because I am often building these interpretations on my own, and anytime you put things out into public they contain a degree of risk, an opportunity for trolls to push back, for people to turn away, instead of trying to meet these questions as I do. But I do always welcome conversation, questions, other views, challenges, when they are thoughtful and earnest and open.

And who else really wants a podcast like this? Probably not most readers, those who are determined to consume books rather than ponder them at length. My guess is that if you’re listening now, you are not most readers. It’s a niche group: readers with purpose, readers driven to know more, readers who are aspiring to more complex meaning—but hopefully not so academically stilted to take ourselves too seriously.

And do I dare? Do I dare to eat a peach? Am I referencing T. S. Eliot or Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War? Answer, yes. I’m going to ask you to reach others for me: people who want this, because word of mouth is always the best way to spread and grow a conversation. Share this episode, share any episode that you’ve liked, share your comments, send a link or post for others to find me. And, if I could kindly ask for one more thing from you: In the show notes and on the website is a link to a listener feedback survey with some cool stuff offered for those who take it. It’s a great place to let me know what you’ve thought about our trip so far and take a real hand in adjusting our course going forward, in letting me know how accurate my reflections are. Let’s collaborate; and I promise if you leave your email there, too, I’ll offer a personal response to your ideas and questions.  As the first journey of Literary Nomads ends, the second is about to begin, with and without missteps and errors, and I for one I’m excited for it, my mouth dropping open in awe . . . 

And sidebar (and add this back up to the technical side), I’m having a hard time deciding how to number the seasons for this podcast, since I renamed it in late 2024. But I think, since I haven’t changed the overall ambition of the podcast, I’m going to continue the sequential numbering of the primary texts as Journeys (or seasons) from the very beginning. I don’t think most listeners will care too much as long as I don’t change numbers afterwards, and that means:

• Journey 1 is Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” 
• Journey 2 is “Fowls in the Frith” (which frankly is one of my favorites despite being such a tiny little marginalia of a poem)
• Journey 3 is Chimamanda Adichie’s magnificent story, “Tomorrow is Too Far,” 
• Journey 4 is Van Gogh and the digital Van Gogh experiences which have already begun to fade from our tourism consciousness
• Journey 5 is Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” which we are just completing
• and Journey 6 will focus on Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.”

I hope you’ll join me. I’m going to drop a trailer for Season 6 / Journey 6 shortly, and then we’re going to take a one or two week break. That will give you time to read the story (I’ve put a link in the Show Notes), take a breath and catch up on episodes you might have missed, complete a feedback survey, and help spread the word. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you doing that.

Thank you for this Journey, for digging around in some pretty muddy moral choices hiding deeper but questionable philosophies. I’m still carrying around my questions, and I hope you have yours, because I’m guessing we won’t be setting those down anytime soon, nor will we forget where we’ve walked. 

We’ve reflected back enough for now. I have some notes on what to do and where to go next, and hopefully you have a still better sense of where I’m coming from and where we’re going. Tell somebody about us here, and then grab them by the hand or video call and . . . 

Go read something. 

Outro

Follow me and find me along with supplements, bonus episodes, resources, newsletters, and still more at Waywords Studio dot com.  That’s Waywords Studio (two s’s in the middle) dot com. Thanks for listening! 

Music for Literary Nomads is by Randon Myles

Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski

Literary Nomads is a production of Waywords Studio. Find me at Waywords Studio on most social media and at Waywords Studio .com.