Speaker 0 00:00:00 <inaudible>.
Speaker 1 00:00:20 Hey, how about you? Fantastic. Uh, you just joined us and you missed an amazing introduction. So sorry to let you know that anyway. It's wonderful to have you here. We're speaking with, is it Laura or Laura? Laura? Yeah. Laura, thank you, Laura and Melissa Montez about your new poetry collection thresholds and Laura, I'm going to ask you to give us a reading, but first I want to talk about the book and the term poetry. We could start out with a big sort of discussion question, which is this. Um, I almost feel like we need a different word besides poetry. When we talk about your work. I think if I, you allowed to poetry for the show and on my own, and if I pick up this book, I wouldn't even know what to call it. Laura, uh, apron, isms, epigrams nonfiction, memoir, um, thoughts and ideas.
Speaker 1 00:01:14 Um, what do you make of this book in terms of form and how did you come about putting this together? Yeah, thank you for asking. I'm always trying to redefine what poetry is in the act of writing it. Um, I feel really invested in this pursuit of what is the line, what determines the length of the line, the feeling of the line, the moment when the line breaks. Um, and I had a very clear, clear agenda when I was writing and thinking about writing thresholds. Like I wanted to, I wanted to think about the line as I was some kind of energetic portal, um, and that, you know, portal being like every time you break it, you are interrupting time. You are jumping on to a new wave of information. So I was experimenting with that. And all of that, you know, could be contained in a line and also thinking about the relationship between lines of poetry and, and their relationship to the sentence that's describing to give our listeners a sense of what you're talking about. So the book is a series of in many cases, singular lines, which are alone, are things to pause on and meditate about if you will. Um, single quotes, I believe these are, uh, uh, words attributed to a particular writers and others, and then, uh, longer pieces. And these are all separated by small circles. Uh, and it all holds together in some sort bead
Speaker 2 00:03:00 Leg, a Parolek sort of way. I don't know how else to describe it. Do you have a reading in mind, Laura, so people maybe can get a flavor for what we're talking about?
Speaker 1 00:03:09 Yeah. Would you like me to read from the book? Yeah, it'd be lovely. That would be lovely. Sure. Okay. So I'll read, um, from the beginning, um, to give you a sense, the book oscillates in, in between different registers of poetry, what feels like memoir art history and, and I embraced different different voices, um, and often sometimes important quotation. Once you spoke without an accent, as if you came from nowhere, nowhere is not a place. It is a modulation, a throbbing. We carry within us a process unremitting. It was sequential until it wasn't an open to what is adjacent there, where the violence is inside the soft tissue, holding wild flowers, like wild parts of me, always desiring and unfolding to speak of you beyond the rewriting, but how, without a body daily, I remind myself the future is not dependent on your inability to describe your own. During I had every intention of beginning where it not for a narrowing, a tightening the bands of color in which I saw myself surrounded, beautiful straight actions bending the time between rotations and the cut inside language. And so far as that slash produces, I Python of fiction.
Speaker 2 00:04:54 Great. Thank you. Another thing I should note for our listeners, there are no titles title breaks among these poems among these lines. And so, um, as a reader, if you, if there's no clear signaling, I guess I would say from you about how we should think about the words on the page check, this is one group, and this is one feeling or one emotion Morgan experience. When we read this, that's obviously intentional on your part. Why did you make that choice?
Speaker 1 00:05:25 Yeah, I, I wanted to write something that felt seamless, but also was composed of many parts. Um, and so my experience when I opened a poetry book, is I, or what I expect to be poetry is I open it and I have a visual relationship to it. So I always want to see how things are laid out on the page. And sometimes, you know, without knowing anything about an officer, um, or what the content of the poetry book is about I'll base decision on, you know, am I attracted to this what's happening in this based on, you know, my visual relationship to it. So I have this wish pre pandemic, um, that my book would be in the poetry section or the near release of section, you know, at the bookstore at moon palace. And people would flip through it and say, what is this? And they wouldn't be able to locate anything in their experience of reading poetry or memoir that would resemble this object. That's littered with, I'm curious punctuation of these holes that you mentioned. Um, so I wanted to are, you know, scramble someone's visual encounter and expectation of poetry in that sense. Um, and also to kind of disrupt reading conventions around what we expect when, when we think we're looking at poetry or what we, we are expecting of an experience when we think we're reading memoir
Speaker 2 00:06:57 Convention. Yeah. You certainly did Laura. And that is exactly what happened to me. Uh, I picked it up and I opened it up and I didn't know what to think because I, I, um, I have the same relationship, visual relationship to poetry as you described. And I, whenever I talked to a poet on this show, I bring this up, which is to say, I can see what the poem looks like for first on the page. And I immediately have some sort of reaction because it looks for me. So I assume there's some formality going on here, maybe in terms of, you know, rhythm or rhyme or whatever the case might be, or things are broken up or spaced and all kinds of ways. And I immediately get a sense for what might be going on within the context of the poem, but you don't give us too many signals here.
Speaker 1 00:07:43 I, I, I want people readers too, to get into the process more so than like, experience a title, for example, as a signal or a signpost, I want, um, you know, one thing I do maybe that was intentional and, and function similar to a title is that there's a preface in the book. And so I, I used a preface, which I wrote kind of, you know, after a lot of the book was done as a, as like my trigger warning, you know, like all ye you know, consider this before you enter here, because I, I was struck by the idea that, that someone would feel, Oh, unprepared, or sort of like, why isn't this doing this or that? And the sense of, uh, how can I conjure up a literary technique that usually isn't appear in a poetry collection, like a preface, you know, that sometimes appears like in a novel, how can I import these other literary conventions to, um, speak to the reader before they even received the first line of the text and be like, okay, if I go any further, I already get a sense of this as the land that we're living in.
Speaker 2 00:09:03 Right, right. Uh, you hinted at this before, but I want to spend a little time if we could talking about the title of the book thresholds I a, there are a couple of words there, thresh holes, and another word that's suggested, which is threshold and holes and cuts and slices and things like that. Pop up a lot in this book, if you don't want to give a giveaway too much to our lovely readers out there. Um, can we talk about what you were getting at here with this imagery, with these words?
Speaker 1 00:09:35 Yeah. So thresholds is, um, a word adopted from an artist from the 1970s, Gordon Mata Clark. And he had a lot of architectural and site specific interventions. And one of the things he was known for were these building cuts. And so he had a kind of playful approach to thinking about space. And, um, one of the photographs of, you know, his interventions on buildings, um, was thresholds. And so we like using words to play with ideas, and he was clearly playing on the idea, like you said, of threshold, um, you know, the space that joins to different rooms or spaces. And, um, I was drawn to that as a concept. So I like to relate to other works of art as a way to think about language. Um, I really feel as a writer that nothing is out of my range of what can I use, you know, sometimes I like to go to philosophy or I like to go to film, or I like to go, um, to sculptural work as a way to think about a writing problem. Um, so thresholds is, is, uh, is it, uh, how I access a certain problem of thinking about holes as they appear throughout the work.
Speaker 2 00:10:56 Nice. Thank you for that. You also, you mentioned a lot of artists and other writers in the book in terms of artists, big sculpture artist, one in particular is Richard, Sarah, and I, and I love Richard Serra, his work, I don't know him. Describe for us Richard Serra's work and people in Minneapolis would be familiar with a piece of his work in the Walker sculpture garden will tell us about Richard Serra's work and why he shows up in your book.
Speaker 1 00:11:23 Yeah. So Richard Serra had this curious sculpture in the Bronx. So, you know, parts of the Bronx and Minneapolis appear in thresholds. And I was really interested in this, uh, I think it's like called base plate hexagram, you know, this sculpture that he did, which was like on the street in the Bronx. And so part of thresholds is this catalog of site-specific artworks that happened in the Bronx where I was born in the 19, um, Richard Serra complained that no one went to go see this artwork. Right. And it, it just got me thinking like, you know, what is an artwork that, that is a scene, you know, or how do we experience language that other people don't hear? Yeah. I love Richard Serra's work too. There's something about the materiality and it's very masculine in a way, similar to Gordon matzoh, Clark. It's like ambitious. And I relate to his use of materials for sure.
Speaker 2 00:12:24 In, in Minneapolis, I'm gonna talk about the Bronx Minneapolis, but we through in Minneapolis and the sculpture garden, his piece is his big piece. Everything's big with Sarah. I believe. I don't know if he's ever done anything relatively small, but giant steel plates that sort of tilt and lean and, uh, um, give a sense both for stability and flimsiness if you will. But anyway, we have a, one of his beautiful pieces here in Minneapolis. Before we talk a little more about the Bronx Minneapolis. I want to remind our listeners that we are speaking with Laura, but most of them on Tez about her new poetry collection and strapped poetry called thresholds, uh, by the way, published by coffee house press when I brought to figure it a local presence here. So let's talk about the Bronx in Minneapolis. And the Bronx is really kind of a star of the show in this book, right? In many respects, I think he could, it's kind of about the Bronx or your relationship with the Bronx, and yet Minneapolis shows up. So let's talk about the Bronx first impression it had on you, how long, how much time you spent there. And maybe as you're telling this story, when you woke up to poetry and a portrait became a part of your life, that's a long question about your past.
Speaker 1 00:13:38 No, I love it. Thank you. I'm still thinking about Richard Serra and his, his, uh, the way that his work dig into the ground. Yeah. They really sort of transfers these different levels. And so I was interested in a similar process of how to scale across different geographies. And so I was born in the Bronx in 1987 and I, when I had been researched, researching art history, uh, I used to teach at M cab, the Minneapolis college of art and design. I kept noticing how the Bronx shows up in a lot of, um, just like, as a biography, like this interesting site where a lot of cool artists were from. So like Lauren's Wiener, um, was working in the Bronx and like Richard Serra's, um, Bronx work. Like I just, I just kept seeing the Bronx popping up in all these ways that I didn't really like anticipate and was like, Oh, I want to think about myself in relation and in lineage.
Speaker 1 00:14:38 So I'm trying to, you know, how do I connect that with being a writer? I think I was trying to explore and thresholds something about how we come to know ourselves through space is a story of how we come to know ourselves through language and through body. So I don't have necessarily an argument about, you know, my relationship to the Bronx or to Minneapolis so much as I like to spend these different times and places, um, as a way to think about how we talk about ourselves through narrative and how we can go through any kind of, you know, visual landscape or geographic landscape or urban landscape and come up with some kind of, um, pastiche collage of, of all of these things. And that somehow is his narrative or that somehow his poetry. Um, and I always like to encourage people to connect with their own sense of place or body or time, um, or art, you know, so they can sort of see for themselves, how are they reflected in these objects and in these narratives and in these history.
Speaker 2 00:15:51 Wow. That's beautiful. I love this description of your connection to the friction of your relation, the relationship between geographic space and language. I thought that was lovely. Thank you for that. So when did you discover poetry for yourself? When did it become important to you? I remember
Speaker 1 00:16:08 Children's books when I was a kid. I remember writing, attempting to write a book, teaching others how to write a book. I don't know why this was in my life drives. Like I think I was maybe like eight years old and I was like, I'm going to write a book. I can instruction manual about how others should write. And I don't even know why, like, I think I was like, I've made three books already. One was like about a dog that was also a surfer. Um, so when did, when did I move into a poetry? Um, probably in high school when I started to like, have a relationship to lyric by way of music. And I was starting to read things like Emily Dickinson and, uh, Lorca. And I was very interested in, in those modes of experience and those ways of, of talking about reality. I was like moody. So it appealed to me.
Speaker 2 00:17:03 Well, you're made to be a poet if you're moody right to him, what's that mood to work. Uh, so you're a teacher, right? Laura.
Speaker 1 00:17:13 I, I do teach, although I'm not teaching currently in another universe, I would have been teaching, um, at NYU this semester, but things put out differently. So
Speaker 2 00:17:24 Yes, they did. Well, I was asking about teaching poetry and I'll just ask it directly. Can you teach poetry? Can you teach someone to write poetry or does it come from that mood?
Speaker 1 00:17:37 I love that question. I ask myself all the time, you know, can you teach someone to do it? Do you want to teach someone how to do something? I've tried to reframe that as for people who are interested in accessing motive experience, what does that mean? Like for people who want to explore how you can use language as a material? I think anybody can do that. I don't think you have to be moody. I think there are many kinds of poetry in the world. There's conceptual poetry. There was just published, um, an anthology of concrete poetry written by women. And it's very pictorial and, um, abstract. Um, maybe it looks moody in a visual register, but, um, I, I do like to work with people who are coming to writing for the first time. I dunno, you know, like people, I like working with artists, um, who are trying to talk, reframe a relationship to, to their practice through language. Um, so I, I definitely believe more so than teaching, welcoming people into the practice. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:18:46 Yeah. Well, good for you, but you'd be a good teacher then I think that's really important, but you tell a story in the book, the details will escape me, but it'll come to where some particular art was defaced and the artists responded that it turned out so much better. I believe graffiti was added to
Speaker 1 00:19:09 Right. It was Sophie Kyle's work. Thank you. So, yeah.
Speaker 2 00:19:13 What does that mean to you? That when the artists said when, when the art was in effect vandalized or whatever term you want to use defaced that it became so much better. Uh, I thought that was a powerful moment, but you leave that, leave us alone with that thought. So I want to know what you think about that as an artist,
Speaker 1 00:19:31 As a writer. Sure. Yeah. Um, I love Sophia Cal she's a conceptual artist and also as she's published books, so there's this kind of merging between her writing and her, her practice, which often involves people, strangers. Um, so this, this artwork was an early one of hers that I was writing about and I was interested in her openness to chance, you know, she, she thought she had a concept of this artwork in which she, you know, interviewed or invited people to visit her, let's say at this gallery, um, in the 1980s in the South Bronx. And then she, you know, when people visited her at the gallery, she was like, take me anywhere you want. So already, that's like a level of trust, you know, like imagine. And this was at a time when people were really like, Oh, the Bronx isn't a safe place.
Speaker 1 00:20:29 So she was, you know, this French woman, inviting people to take her wherever they wanted. And then she'd photograph them and write a small prose paragraph about their experience. So she already kind of was landing herself to, to these strangers. And then she hangs up the show and then, you know, it's quote unquote to face, or there's like, graffiti that shows up. So, and the result is that it's better. And I guess I, I almost sort of leave it without interpretation or, or judge the gesture because it's, for me, that's, it's like Providence or like faded, like, Oh, like Sophie Kal opens and avails herself to chance. And it just happens like the, you can look it up online. So if you Cal the Bronx, the effect of the graffiti makes the project so much more interesting, like aesthetically it's like another layer and it totally fits in with the ways that she invited other people, you know, to help her make this project.
Speaker 2 00:21:32 Are you a visual artist to Laura or should we given what we've just heard consider your writing individual art?
Speaker 1 00:21:39 I don't know if that's a great question. Maybe it reveals my hesitation or anxiety about claiming an artist identity because I, um, right. I know, and work with people who like live, you know, live off their art and have studio spaces. So I guess I can say that I sometimes integrate, um, visual components into my writing. And sometimes I also deviate and just, you know, like collaborate, let's say with a, with a filmmaker, um, on something. And I, I, you know, like to contribute to the concept of talking about what the final work is. Um, but am I like sitting in the editing room or am I like holding the camera? Not always. So in that way, I, I do resonate with, uh, conceptual art, the land of ideas, more so than the like land of drawing and painting, let's say,
Speaker 2 00:22:35 Okay. So if we did a Google search for you, we wouldn't find some stuff out there besides your writing.
Speaker 1 00:22:41 Oh, you'll definitely find me doing performance work. That was a, a moment in my, um, a few years ago, I was using performance to explore, explore something about poetry on the line and audience. And I was taking a lot of dance workshops at the time. Um, there's some collage work, um, where I'm thinking about place in relation to Puerto Rico. That was shortly after hurricane Maria, um, on YouTube, you'll find a video collaboration that I did with Jay Matthews of boy harsher. And, um, I worked on the text and she, she made a film sort of in tandem with that. So you'll, you'll find some experiments of mine. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:23:27 Fantastic. That's great. Uh, believe it or not, we're nearing the end of our time. Um, and before we get the countdown from the amazing nanny back in the studio or doing this via zoom, as I'm sure everyone assumes, we are talking to Laura mimosa Montez about her newest collection of poetry thresholds out from coffee house press. And let's talk about what you might be working on going, coming forward, coming up. What's next for Laura while we have a chance here.
Speaker 1 00:23:56 Sure. I've just really enjoyed this interview. What am I working on now? Uh, I'm thinking about things that come up in thresholds. So, you know, thresholds, I often prefigured as a book about touch and I sort of weird to publish a book about touch in a time where touches taboo. So I think I'm returning again to this question in this new book that I'm thinking of that is actually not poetry and maybe more narrative, maybe it'll read more like fiction where touch and intimacy enter in as a zones of inquiry.
Speaker 2 00:24:32 Wow. And what shape this will take, who knows you probably don't even know yet. Is that right? Is that how you,
Speaker 1 00:24:39 Yeah, I like to be led by the work. So right now I'm in the sort of, what am I gravitating to? What am I attracted to? And I, and I'm starting to fall in love with the ideas and the concept of, you know, and the rules are starting to shape. So there's not going to be any references. There's not going to be any art history. There's not going to be line breaks. Those are the things that I'm starting to fall in love with us concepts. Um, and then looking towards writers like David <inaudible>, who's an artist and also was also a writer as models for like, what is the voice and what is the kind of desire that I want to move closer to
Speaker 2 00:25:15 You wake up every morning, a little to ask, especially as ports, this, about how they work. I have a precious few seconds left. Do wake up, ready to go to work at the cup of coffee and sit down or do you wait for us? You know,
Speaker 1 00:25:27 No, no, no. I write radically and you know, it's a little chaotic, so I really embrace it when it comes to me. But I also like to let it percolate and foment and ferment, it's a process of fermentation for me, not like a daily, not like
Speaker 2 00:25:48 Really. Okay. And then you come back and, and, and work on it. I'm sure. I believe you're an editor also. So you'd probably love rewriting your work more than you love writing
Speaker 1 00:25:57 100, 100%. I don't like generating new material. I like working on, on raw stuff.
Speaker 2 00:26:06 Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like you have a solid idea of going forward for the next one. I keep asking about it because I'm curious about what, what it's going to be, and maybe we'll see it show up. Right. Um, cause you publishing in other journals and magazines, right?
Speaker 1 00:26:19 Yeah. Uh, yeah. I'm, it'll, it'll be out there. So when, when I'm ready to share. Yeah. You'll, you'll see me, me all over the place during here. It is new, new, new, because I'm always chasing the new and the new is what excites me. So I'm glad to put it on people's radar.
Speaker 2 00:26:34 Well, we're glad you published this book. It's wonderful. It's thought provoking. It pushes genre. It challenges the reader and we all should embrace a challenge these days. Well,
Speaker 3 00:26:44 Boy, I'm getting the high five now, so I'm going to wrap it up. And, uh, ladies and gentlemen, this is Laura mimosa Montez, M O N T E S. Google her by her book from coffee house, press and stay tuned for the next part of our show. I'm going to send it back to the amazing Annie of the studio. Laura, it's been a real treat. Thank you so much, David. This has been really fun. Wonderful talking to talk to you again. I know.
Speaker 4 00:27:14 And now we're on with, uh, Dave FEDEC and read for gave, uh, thank you so much. This is right on radio on 90.3 FM.
Speaker 3 00:27:23 Thank you. Amazing, Annie. I'm the fascinating lays back in the studio. I'm on zoom with read for grade five read. Hey damn. How are you? Fantastic read is the author of love Zack small town football and the life and death of American boy read. Congratulations on the book it's compelling, it's powerful and you are getting a lot of attention for it. And well-deserved, I must say, thank you. It's been a, is my first book, as you know, and it's been, uh, an exhausting and emotional and thrilling, uh, couple of weeks. It was released the day after labor day and, and a few excerpts published in a couple of national publications. And, uh, I don't know if excerpts sell books or if they just like, I've had enough, I read, read 7,000 words of this I don't need anymore. Um, we'll find out, right. It was cool to get my name to sports illustrated.
Speaker 3 00:28:15 I wanted to do that since I was in like sixth grade. So that was cool and congrats on all of that. And, uh, everyone who is here for the introduction at the top of the show knows that Reed, uh, is a writer that has appeared in a number of magazines, newspapers, and courses, uh, rights now for, uh, in addition to other places are very old Minneapolis star Tribune. So, um, read, uh, it's a book about football. It's a book about tragedy. It's a book about middle America and it's a book about America. It's, it's really one of these sorts of, uh, pieces of all around journalism. And we're going to talk a little bit more about that. Um, but before I turn it over to you for discussion, let's have, uh, an extra, if you would read from us, I think we want to get a sense for, uh, right up at the top, what we're talking about here.
Speaker 3 00:29:01 Okay. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thank you. If you want to set this up read, please do. Yeah, I will. And I an offer frankly, a trigger warning. This is a book about lots of very, uh, serious and depressing things. Uh, it's a book about suicide, about mental illness, about brain injury, about football, about masculinity and parenting. Uh, what I'm going to read is the prologue to this book. I don't know your rules, but I will, uh, self censor the couple of swear words that are in this prologue. Uh, I appreciate that. Thank you. No worries. Don't want to get kicked off the air, but uh, yeah, I think this, this is actually from Zach's Zach Easter is the main, the title character of this book is from his first suicide attempt in November of 2015, uh, which was five weeks before I'm not spoiling anything. This, uh, you know, in the first chapter of this book, that's that Zach is not going to live, but, uh, it was five weeks before his, his second and, uh, completed suicide attempt.
Speaker 3 00:30:00 I think that would be the correct phrasing. Yeah. I think this gets at a lot of the, the big picture themes that you just talked about. Great. Thank you. So, uh, yeah, I'll just start right here. It's fairly short. Um, Zack Easter stood on the long wooden dock leading out onto Lake Ecobee, gripping the 40 caliber pistol. He'd given his dad for father's day. Not even five months before the sun had dipped over the horizon. On the other side of the Y shape, Blake leaves, lay and heaps on the fringe of the woods. The Gustine November winds died down as the sun sank on the horizon, but there was still a chill in the air. Winter was coming. Zack took out his phone and snapped a picture. He posted it to Snapchat ignoring the frantic phone calls that were pouring into his phone. God bless America caption the photo.
Speaker 3 00:30:52 Where is Zach all around? Zach's hometown, friends and family were terrified. They'd seen his Facebook post a few minutes before. If you're reading this, the God blessed the times we've had together, please forgive me. I'm taking selfish road out only. God understands what I've been through. I will always watch over you. They needed to stop him, but wow. They didn't even know where he was from the house where Zach grew up a few miles away and amidst fields of corn. His parents called Zach did not pick up in the small town, just down the street or Zach and played high school football. And from Des Moines, the big capital city, not quite 20 miles to the North, his friends called Zach did not pick up at 5:36 PM. A college roommate texted him. Hey, what are you up to bud? No reply. The law school at case Western reserve university, almost 700 miles away, Cleveland, Ohio, Allie, Epperson, Zach's girlfriend, and the only person to whom he had fully confided his struggles with his rapidly deteriorating brain called Zack did not pick up.
Speaker 3 00:31:57 He called again. He did not pick up. She called again. Finally, Zach picked up there was terror in his voice. I can't do this. He told her it's never going to get better. Allie by basis law student who in many ways was Zach's opposite. A bleeding heart, liberal who balanced out Zach's died in the wool. Conservatism was freaking out. How many hours did you spend on the phone with him talking about the disease that seem to be eating his brain from the inside? How many times have the two talked about the sport? He loved the sport that it consumed much of his childhood, but now can seem to be consuming the rest of his life as well. How many times did she told him that a real man was not stoic and unfeeling that a real man must face his demons instead of suffering silently and deference to some antiquated, ideal of masculinity.
Speaker 3 00:32:48 How many times has she told him not to apologize to her? That she loved him, despite the crazy stuff that was going on and that they would work through it all together earlier on this day, Friday, the 13th of all days in November, 2015, either apologize again. I'm sorry. You fell in love with a guy with a ducked up brain. Zach texted her, his phones, autocorrect softening the swear word, you know, woken early, started drinking and called alley in a panic lead in the morning, drunk and swerving his car around the suburbs. She coaxed him to drive into a gas station. Then into a Jimmy John's to grab a sandwich and sober up. She'd calmed him like she always did. He'd apologized like he always did. She texted him back. You can't fall on. Choose who you fall in love with you just fall in love.
Speaker 3 00:33:37 Then she texted an ominous reply. If anything happens to me just by a chance of luck, tell my family everything. Now, things were happening. A friend noticed the setting. It was act Snapchat, photo the beach on Lake ACABI where Zach and Allie at escape two in the summer to get away from high school friends and stare at the clouds. The Lake was just down the road from his family's house. The Lake's name is derived from an ancient Algonquin language. It means resting place. Allie kept Zach on the phone, listening the sound of my voice. She soused him. Listen to the sound of my voice. I'm losing my mind. He cried. This is it for me. One Warren County Sheriff's office cruiser came speeding down the winding Hill toward the Lake, followed by another alley. Did you send those cops here? The cops got closer to him.
Speaker 3 00:34:26 He started apologizing to Allie and he told her he wanted his brain donated for research and Zach's phone cut out out on the dock. Zach pointed pistol of the darkened sky and fired a warning shot. That is when a pickup truck sped down the Hill and slammed to a stop next to the Lake Zach's father, a burly former high school football coach named miles. Easter jumped out the parking lot quickly filled with squad cars. One deputy, a former all-conference linebacker who played for miles on the same high school team. Zach had played for trained his assault rifle on Zack lasers from other police rifles danced on Zach's body. The evening was dark and it was getting cold miles. Saw the cherry red 2008 Mazda, three Zack called old red. He peered into the window of his son's car. He saw an empty six pack of Coors light, an empty bottle of captain Morgan rum and a pill bottle.
Speaker 3 00:35:23 Flood lights illuminated Zack black curtain fell in the water behind him. Zach stood up from a picnic table and walked down the pier toward a wooden foot fishing hut at water's edge. A few more steps, and he'd be inside alone on the water out of sight. Put your gun down. The deputy shouted. Nope. Zach yelled with an anguish. Laugh, not going to do that in a flash Zach's father realized what was happening. Zach wants the police to shoot him. Effin. Myles said to himself, I can't let this happen. Zach's father sprint Pash that passed the Sheriff's deputies and onto the pier Zack. He shouted. If he shoots me, he shoots me. The father thought dad, stop is miles Easter ran toward his son. Zack space came into focus. His blue eyes looked foggy and confused. The expression on his still boyish face matched the tenor of his voice. Sad, sick, exhausted, scared one down by life eaten once. And for all Zach I'm coming miles said, put your gun down, dad, Zach, shout a dad, stop then gripping his father's pistol. Zack disappeared into the fishing hut. The doors slam shut behind him and Zack Easter was alone.
Speaker 3 00:36:43 Ladies and gentlemen that is read four agree of reading from love Zack. That's how the book starts. And I dare you to stop reading after that. That's an intense and dramatic beginning. Thank you. Read the book is loved Zack again, small town football and the life and death of an American boy around right on radio on KFA. I read a really a gripping piece of writing and one hell of a story. How did you come up? We have so much to talk about and soul full time, of course, but let's talk about how you came into this story and then you can talk to us about your relationship with the family. Cause that seems crucial to me to this was a, I used to work for the Des Moines register in double in Iowa, lived in Iowa for 10 years. And uh, not long a few years after I stopped at the Boyne register, I was a national sports writer and old friend passed on his obituary.
Speaker 3 00:37:33 That was in my old newspaper. And it was right before Christmas, 2015. And there was this paragraph in the obituary that speaks about Zack struggles with chronic traumatic encephalopathy. And to hear that from a 24 year old man, all through high school, it's just like, Holy crap. Uh, and I reached out to his family and it was just about two days. I'm sorry, not two days, two weeks after Zach's, uh, death. Uh, it was the first Sunday of 2016 and I was at their house for Sunday afternoon. I spent four hours sitting on their, uh, in their living room, on their carpet, talking about his life, talking about his death, talking about his childhood and talking about how and when his mother's words, very bluntly like football killed him. And what struck me from that moment, from that moment, I went there thinking, Oh, this is, this is a topical story.
Speaker 3 00:38:27 It's a tragic story. It's something I
[email protected]. Maybe we could have a, you know, 3000 word story and an accompanying documentary piece on Fox sports. One. I come out of there thinking, Oh my God, this is a book. I mean, it was, it was like that because you'd left behind all these journals that failed his first, you know, first person account of his deep dark, but not necessarily linear descent into this, uh, this darkness of CTE. Um, but also what also struck me in that moment where I'm sitting on their, on their floors behind me for almost the entire conversation Sunday afternoon in January, I guess it was on the TV, it was Vikings Packers. It was the Packers against his dad's favorite team, the Vikings, my adopted hometown team, the Vikings, and all the men in that room, myself included were looking back at that TV and we're checking our fantasy football scores. And we're talking about how football killed a 24 year old man, uh, or at least certainly contributed to it. And it really the dissonance of that moment as a big football fan myself and that immediately, it said something profound about America, about our views on masculinity and uh, about our, you know, the way that we think about our favorite,
Speaker 2 00:39:53 Right? Oh, that's still all described. And in that respect, you are a character in this book because you show up with your own views as you just, as you have just described it probably be almost impossible to keep yourself out of this narrative because of what the story really entails. And just to repeat what you said, when I suggested earlier, this is a story about all of us. You don't have to be a football fan, you can hate football and this is still a story for you, right?
Speaker 3 00:40:22 Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, on its surface, I think someone looks at this as a, as a, as a sports book and it's not, it's, it's a book about sports, but it's not a sports book. It's a book about parenting, I think as much as anything talk about masculinity. Uh, if I stop you there read yeah, please.
Speaker 2 00:40:41 A couple of his father. Yeah. Boy. What a hard story. What a hard thing to experience as a father. And yet the, you just seemed like, uh, someone who didn't even crack. And did he really, I don't even know what I'm asking. What's your, what's your experience with the father in terms of his reaction to his son's suicide?
Speaker 3 00:41:03 Yeah, his father is like they have this thing called the Easter mentality. Uh, and people in Indianola know this as Myles Easter is the father. He has three sons, all of them played football miles. Easter was a division one football player. He coached for the smallest college in town. And then he became the defensive coordinator for the high school team, coached all three of the sons and Myles Easter was a tough dude. Uh, he was what you think of as a football coach. He knows he'll scream at ya. And then he'll, and he would do this thing where he'd yell and he'd be cussing. And you'd be calling, you know, his teenage players, all sorts of names at halftime. And then he'd say they take a breath and you go Okey doke. And you turn to the whiteboard and be like, okay, now it's teaching time.
Speaker 3 00:41:50 He's a very traditional masculine character. And I don't think that's a coincidence because if you look at his family, they've lived off Zack Easter, his, his middle son was a seventh generation Iowan, basically on the same, more or less plot of land in rural Iowa, not too far from Des Moines, they're farmers, they work land and they very much had this, this idea of this is what a man is. A man gets stuff, done, a man, Tufts things out, and that's who miles was to his sons. And I think his reaction to his son's death is, is kind of what you'd expect from a man like that. He doesn't talk about it that much. He goes out and has a couple of beers in the backyard and, uh, goes hunting with his two dogs. He, uh, yeah, he's tortured by it. Uh, but, but he's not the type of guy. And I think he's quoted in this book saying I don't need no F in therapy. Uh, that's not his style. And it's, it's a way that his version of masculinity is sort of, sort of his blessing, but also his curse because he's, he's having a tough time with all of this, but you wouldn't know it from talking to him. I really liked the guy. And I hope that came out in the book.
Speaker 2 00:43:03 Yes, indeed. It did. It is gut wrenching to read the personal journal of Zac to know this is going on, the amount that he was suffering physically and mentally and people that loved him didn't know that at the time. And inadvertently were really complicit. I hate to use that term. It's a softer term in his downfall, but they didn't know. And then you just want to be able to stop time and say help this kid he's in trouble.
Speaker 3 00:43:35 The timing of the, of this I think is key. And I think is, is frankly the only way that Zach's parents, especially his father can actually go forward. He graduates from high school in 2010. That's when his football career ends after suffering three pretty bad concussions. His senior year of high school. That is just when talk about concussions and football and CTE are starting to come out. Uh, it was that same, the same month. I think that he graduated was when Jean Marie Laskas had this amazing article in GQ about dr. Ben and Amalo and sort of the, he was the guy that, uh, you know, the movie concussion, she wrote a book about it and became a movie concussion. This was, the articles were just starting to appear in the New York times. So Zach's parents, they have the, uh, they're able to plead innocence, uh, and naivete parents. Now aren't I got two young boys they're four and eight and it comes a lot more difficult these days because we're, we're not in the age of innocence anymore. We can't say we didn't know the risks of football. Weren't just a bum knee or a bad shoulder, but right. Green, the very, you know, what makes us human.
Speaker 2 00:44:47 Yeah. So on that question, and I don't want to run out of time and I'll put you on the spot. You may not have to answer this question as a parent because I, there are a number of high schools in the country that have abolished football. And so even if you want to play as an athlete, I know some very big time, high schools out East where my brother lives, uh, not, you know, he didn't have a choice, whether his kids were going to play, but I'm going to ask you this question anyway, empathetically, if they want to play, you can let them play
Speaker 3 00:45:12 Right now. I say, no. Uh, but it's, it's one thing saying no, uh, when I'm just downstairs with my four year old watching the Vikings lose on Sundays, uh, it's another thing when he's 12 or 14 and all his friends are going out for the team and I've been watching football with him for a decade and he comes to the dad, I want to do this. And daddy wrote this book about football, and this book talks about the dangers of football, but I think it also very much talks about the rewards of football. It's a cop out of an answer, but like, I don't think I'd really have a choice cause my wife feels more,
Speaker 2 00:45:51 No, it's not a cop,
Speaker 3 00:45:54 Much more complicated question. If organically falls in love with the sport and wants to, I mean, the answer is probably no, right? I mean, it would make me a hypocrite. I love football. I'm not gonna let my own kids play
Speaker 2 00:46:10 Well, but see, that's a, that's a beautiful answer in a sense that I think the country's going through that right now in a way, uh, it's become almost a guilty pleasure. I mean, should I even watch it today to support this? Right? And uh, this country loves football and certain parts of the country love it a hell of a lot. And it's almost impossible to imagine it going away. Right?
Speaker 3 00:46:29 Well, I mean, it's like a religion in certain parts of the country. It's like a civic institution. You see small towns in Texas where it's like the biggest piece of infrastructure in the whole town is the high school football stadium, 20,000 feeds in a stadium and in a town of 12,000, these are very real things you see in small town, Iowa, where you have these towns of 2000 people. And it's like on a Friday night, a whole town migrates, 30 miles down the road for the big game, there is something different about football. I think that's different than any other sport that the community aspect, the fact that are just so many people that play these huge,
Speaker 2 00:47:07 Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 3 00:47:08 Life lessons you get from football. Can you get them from, from basketball? Can you get them from track and field? I think some people would say, yes, I'd say probably no, not these because football is such a metaphor for life and fighting through pain sometimes to the detriment of your own brain. But there's something also good about the idea of fighting through pain. So I do hope that lives in the grays where it's like, if you love football, this book is going to challenge your views on football. If you hate football and thinks that it brings nothing positive to our country, this book is going to challenge your views on football. That's that's well said, and it does that. And it, it challenges your views on a lot of things that society on America and who we are. I, I just think it's got a lot going on in there.
Speaker 3 00:47:53 Uh, we're talking to read for Greek author of love, Zack small town football and the life and death of an American, an American boy, just out getting a lot of attention or nearing the top of the hour at Reed. What are you working on next? Do you have any big projects or is it, uh, I got a big star Tribune story coming out in a week and a half. That is the longest I started the star Tribune a year ago. And it's the longest story that I've done there. It's like 10,000 words Sunday. I'm not going to tell you what it's about, what six characters and it's about one of the most important issues that's been going on in 2020. So that narrows it down to like 18 different things. But you can probably guess what it's about 10,000 words and is it in their magazine?
Speaker 3 00:48:35 I mean, where are they going to fit that they're actually doing a special section for it, which I'm really excited. I do think it's worth it. Cause it's, I mean, I'll just say it's a story about COVID, but it's really that that just shows the human personal toll of COVID and how it's changed us as human beings. Um, in very intimate ways. I, I I'm, I'm really proud of the story and I, I think it will be, it's a different type of story. Yeah. Well, I'm sure it's going to be great. If your book has any indication, that's exciting. We look forward to that read, um, where we're getting close here. Annie, if you want to pop on all rap, I'm getting the rappers. Are we ever going to rap? This is read for grave. Author of love, Lovesac, small town football and the life and death of an American boy. Thanks for it. It's really been a pleasure. Congratulations on the book. Yeah. Great. Doing this. Great to be on the show and uh, yeah. Thanks a bunch.
Speaker 0 00:49:31 <inaudible>.
