Our conversation this week is with Lee Stockdale - acclaimed poet, Army veteran, and winner of the 2022 United Kingdom National Poetry Prize.
For 10 years, Lee felt a slab on his head - to infinity in every direction - weighing him down. His father, Grant Stockdale, was close friends with John F. Kennedy and, overcome by grief, jumped to his death ten days after the assassination. Due to the shame, stigma, and guilt, he didn't talk about it. But with the help of an extraordinary therapist, a chance enounter with Patti Smith, and cab ride with Jackie Kennedy, Lee felt the weight lift; the loneliness give way to connection. He started doing the things his father did. He finished college, got married, had children, and built a life worth living. And just like his mother, Alice Boyd Stockdale, he started writing poetry to move through the grief and into joy and healing.
In this episode you'll hear Lee talk about that journey to joy and healing, how writing brought him close to his father again, the influence of his mother's poetry on his life, the unsung wonder of Alice Notley, and some other fun stories featuring Bing Crosby, Yoko Ono, and Bob Hope.
Location: Lee's living room in Fairview, NC.
Mentioned in this epsiode:
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
Quote from Dante: The Divine Comedy
Where the Roots Reach for Water by Jeffery Smith
City Lights Bookstore in Sylva, NC
Can Antioch College Return From the Dead Again?
St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery Poetry Project
CBGB - Bithplace of NYC's Rock, Folk, and Punk Music
Are you Jackie Kennedy? by Lee Stockdale
Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Grant Stockdale in England
Jack Paar interview Robert Kennedy in 1964
St. Mark's Poetry Project Archive
Alice Notley and the Art of Not Giving a Damn
White Phosphorus by Alice Notley
