Poured Over: Saeed Jones on Alive at the End of the World

Miwa Messer

“This book feels very much…drawing from the Black Saints: Whitney Houston, Paul Mooney, Little Richard, Luther Vandross, almost my own canon, my own tradition, my own history, to make sense of what’s happening now. I’m not going back to Homer, necessarily. I’m kind of trying to create a new lineage, because I feel that we’ve been betrayed by our presented histories.” Saeed Jones joins us on the show to riff on his incredibly personal and indelible new poetry collection Alive at the End of the World, along with the pervasiveness of grief, how both he and his writing have changed since he published his memoir, what’s up with his new podcast, Vibe Check, and much more with Poured Over’s host Miwa Messer.

Featured Books (episode)
Alive at the End of the World by Saeed Jones
Prelude to Bruise by Saeed Jones
How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones
Furious Cool by David Henry and Joe Henry

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.

Full transcript for this episode:

B&N

I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and Saeed Jones—You know this guy’s name, you know him. He’s one of my favorite humans on the planet. And he even deigned to join me in the studio today, which as you can tell, guys, this is such a small space. This is not— Oh my we are so far from glamour.

Saeed Jones

If you want some one-on-one time. Right,

B&N

Right. This is what you do. You have a podcast and you invite people whose work you adore. Alive at the End of the World is the new— I don’t even know which camera I’m looking at. You know what, this is just going to be messy. This is going to be totally messy. Because it’s all about the words when you’re talking to a poet and you’re talking to a memoirist. So this is perfect.

It’s all about the mess

B&N

I was showing you before how I read; that’s how I read, totally how I read.

Wow, okay, I’m gonna peek.

B&N

By all means. There are some editorial comments about some people who show up in your past.

Oh I love that, that’s so exciting. Okay.

B&N

Okay. So Alive at the End of the World, though. And I just this jacket, these words, I love this book. And you know, this. I mean, I’ve been excited about all of this for a really long time. But I actually want to start with the notes at the back of the book, because they’re intense. I was not expecting that. That’s like you gave me a key to the work. And that’s a little — you’ve had notes before? But not like this. So can we just let’s go to page 77. And let’s talk about why you put these notes

Yeah, I mean, it did for a few reasons. I mean, one, I want it to embody both the chaos and, you know, a lot of the phenomenon of what we’re living through, right, you know, like repetition, right? For example, or, you know, we don’t get to decide when the world and all of this chaos intrudes, you know, you’re in the middle of dinner and you get a push notification that can totally send you spinning and up into everything. And so I thought, oh, you know, I like the idea. Like, someone finishes the book. And they’re like, Okay, that was great. And I’m taken it all in, and then they’re like, oh, let’s check out the notes. And the notes become an experience onto themselves, like, shook in a different way. And because you’re not expecting that, because notes are usually pretty staid. Oh, this poem was inspired by a title from Neruda, like, you know, that I wanted to like upend that.

B&N

Which I appreciate. But also you talk about an early poem in Alive at the End of the World: That’s Not Snow, It’s Ash, and you call it the sort of gentle, unexpected heart of the collection. And it’s a great poem, but I am not sure I would have identified it as the heart. So I feel like you’re letting me in a little more than usual. So let’s start there. Yes, start with that poem.

Do you want me to read?

B&N

Yes, totally.

This is so exciting.

B&N

This collection is spectacular. The world needs this book

That’s Not Snow, It’s Ash

You are no singer, but one night

a song is stolen from you,

never to be returned. The loss

is like a dream about your lover

burned alive.

In the morning,

he mumbles making breakfast,

favorite mug and hand, fine.

But you saw what you saw.

You drink your coffee, pat his thigh

and watch the snowfall outside,

pretending you don’t smell smoke.

He’s fine, you think. We are fine,

B&N

Yeah, it’s so much better when you read it. It’s so much better when you read it out loud. My, the voice in my head sounds a little different. But okay,

Get the audio book, which will be out soon.

B&N

But that particular piece, I felt like when I was reading Alive at the End of the World, and I’ve now read it a couple of times. Once, when I first got it. And then once you know you sort of switch your gears when you’re shooting for something that has… This collection feels looser in ways than Prelude to Bruise, it feels a little less formal in a lot of ways. I’m I wasn’t expecting the prose poetry, which was great. And we’re gonna talk about that in a separate thing, because I think you’re doing something there. But can we talk about the creation of this collection? I mean, did you sit down? And did this become something that you sort of worked on end to end as a whole, intentionally or not? But was that sort of the vision sitting down and saying, Okay, this is the moment for a new collection.

A little bit in between. There were there were a few poems that I wrote, actually, maybe towards the end of How We Fight for Our Lives. A Memory, A Stranger, two poems about my mom. So it makes sense that that she would be on my mind at that time.

Yeah, so there were like a handful, like I would say, five or six poems that I already had that, you know, I see where my mind was waiting for me to arrive. But then I do think That’s Not Snow, It’s Ash. Um, I remember I think it was like a February morning. So it would have been February of 2020. It was it was snowing in Columbus, Ohio, where I live. Of course, it was right before the news. I know which, which makes it even Of course, more haunting, you know, but I do I think in part, it’s the quiet heart of the book, because I do think it was the beginning of me, acknowledging to myself that there’s this preoccupation, right, sense of something is off. I can’t quite articulate it yet. But something is off and I’m already scared. And why am I having an anxiety attack when we are fine? But then also, yeah, I mean, I think then you see, the material began to collate around it. And then the book happened very quickly. And you might notice from the notes, I mean, I often when I can be honest, I’ll say like, I was writing, you know, this poem on this day last summer. You know, I note that several times. So yeah, it did quickly kind of gather. And I think I realized that this book has kind of been coming at me for a few years now. I think it’s fair to say.

B&N

it feels too like Alive is absolutely in conversation with your memoir, how We Fight for Our Lives, which, again, I had read early on, we picked it for the Discover program years ago, and 2019 feels like it was—it feels like we 2019 is a really long time ago.

But going back to it, it’s so obviously a piece of Alive at the End of the World. Can we talk about how that works for you?

One, as a writer who comes to everything from poetry, but you know, prose at some point you not have to choose but you know, do you have to go all in on the memoir. Then I think you realize that there are aspects of the same experiences that if written with lyric in mind, are honored in a different way. And then you know, all books, and certainly all memoirs, have fallout, whether it’s family conflict, or controversy or just you reckoning with the experience, I think what was interesting, one of the things that was interesting about publishing How We Fight for Our Lives, is that I went on a, you know, a major national book tour right before the pandemic. And so, you know, I’m journeying, I’m out in the country, you know, meeting people everywhere, they’re coming up to me talking about their grief, they’re coming up to me talking about nights where they almost didn’t walk out of rooms alive, they’re talking to me about their mothers, their grandmothers, their first crushes, their bullies. And then everything stops.

And then I’m home alone, right? Just sitting with all of those feelings, while you know a pandemic and, and mass violence, gun violence, police brutality— all these things are kind of swirling around me. So I think, and it’s interesting even just to see the titles are Prelude to Bruise. You know, my first book I wrote, it started in my mid 20s, you know, very much a young person reckoning with coming of age, How We Fight for Our Lives, there’s more confidence there, like now I think I’ve got something to share with you about how we make it to the next day. And then you fight for your life and then your reward is that you get to live to be alive at the end of the world. You did it.

B&N

it is a prize. It is a prize. This is not where I expected the world to be. I will say that this is, you know, what’s that, you make plans in the universe laughs whatever that is.

And this is a book full of that kind of laughter

B&N

But here’s the thing, I appreciate the laughter because who would have thought that this would be our day to day, I mean, this? Nothing, no one can prepare for what the last few years have looked like. And I’m going back to ’18, ‘19, like we’re going pre-pandemic,

And arguably the more committed you are to those blueprints, to those this is what they told those manuals, the harder I think all of this is.

B&N

Yeah, yeah. Without a doubt, without a doubt. And also, frankly, I would rather laugh at the bleak stuff than let the bleak stuff put me under a table in the fetal position. Because that’s, I don’t know if that’s being a former Bostonian because kind of have to laugh at everything, or if it’s simply just something that comes with time because I would rather be part of what’s around me, then, I mean, it’s why I read I read so I can have my brain blow up. I read so I can understand. Sometimes other people, not always but I just I would rather be part of a world and that’s what you’re doing with the poems that you are building worlds with poems. And I don’t think every reader comes to poetry thinking, Oh, this is world building. I think in many ways, there are plenty of folks who are just kind of like, well, it’s science fiction, of course. That’s right, you know, world building, or you’re doing historical fiction and and that’s world building. But I would argue that the physical act of writing, whether it’s prose, or poetry is world building.

Yeah, you’re creating a space or landscape. I mean, I think with my first poetry collection was Prelude to Bruise. I mean, there was, I mean, I had it charted. There’s a literal map that you journey across the book, you can you can feel the characters moving, you know, across a nation, really, as he’s, as he’s kind of coming into himself and trying to outrun his self and Alive at the End of the World. I mean, because it is about collabs, I think it was more about establishing that sense of spaces as they’re eroding. You know, literally in middle, you know, it’s the science, the AI lab that is pristine, but like it’s like, morally corroding, like, as the poem progresses, and like we move into the implication, or a character who refuses to leave home, and is clearly really suffering as a result of that. Yeah, so changing the relationship to our space.

B&N

Changing the relationship, but also, when you look at things like AI, I take every opportunity I can to remind people that AI is programmed by people. And it’s not just something that like sort of wanders out of the ether, the robot can’t read that your hands are under the sink, the water doesn’t turn on.

It is really like, it totally happened. And that’s why I’m using it as an example. Because if the robot can’t read that you’re there—

And it’s not the robot’s fault.

B&N

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Well, you do have a poem that I was not expecting. This, this whole Japanese, AI.

Poor little Affeto.

B&N

I want to talk about the structure of that more than the AI itself, because I feel like we just talked about sort of the the thrust of the thing, but it’s a different structure for you. If anyone who’s read Prelude to Bruise, you keep to a very, very sort of classical formal structure

And tone, like, is it like, is this actual form in my writing, like verse or, you know, are there sestinas? No, but there’s, there’s a little bit more of a buttoned up. Which is interesting, because the themes are, hot, heavy, wild, you know, lurid at times. Whereas this is much more, this is unplugged. Yeah, this is, you know, like, I think I even allude, like, at one point, at the end of the short story, the end of the book, the narrator says, you know, and a field full of wildflowers that at some point, I would have been able to map whereas in this book, it’s like hydrangeas, and that, you know, like, you’re always this will get this person doesn’t have time to kind of, totally lean into like the artifice and the opulence of, you know, what I mean, their gestures, their moments, but this person is like, exhausted, at times rushed out of his mind.

There are formal leaps in terms of how the poems present, poems are on their sides. There’s a poem just of alternate titles. There’s a short story that I think when you first encounter it, you might rightly think, why is Saeed opening with a personal essay so early in the book, and then, you know, like, you know, so playing with form but in a different way. Because even amidst, I think the, the disarray of the Apocalypse, there’s still architecture where even in real time we’re building and disbuilding, it may be dysfunctional. It may be violent, but we’re building something, you know, it’s not like, right now, in the United States, however you think about our democracy. We still have one. Yeah, still what it is. Is it working? Is it healthy for us? No, but look what we’ve built in the last few years.

B&N

Yeah. But isn’t that isn’t that human nature, though, to build? I mean, isn’t that what we do? Think about it. First human thing we ever did was tell stories. Right? That’s building. Yeah. It’s building history. It’s building, telling stories. I mean, reading. And I’ve said this before on the show, but I do believe there are people who think reading is a very passive thing. Oh, no, yeah, you bring a lot to whatever you’re reading, and that makes the experience different for every single reader.

And then so maybe that and so maybe that’s really what’s interesting, in this way about the form of the poem about the robot. Yeah, because it’s written in five sections as a bedtime story, right? We see bedtime stories kind of appear a few times throughout the, the book and but each iteration of the story is darker, more disturbing.

I wouldn’t say necessarily closer to the truth, because I think that’s very cynical. But there’s something you know, it goes from being like, Oh, this is a modern Pinocchio to like, Oh, this is about human cruelty. This is about suffering. And then the structure, I think, points to all of our stories are not altruistic. It’s not all noble or even moral. Sometimes, of course, we use our stories to manipulate, to inflict, and I think, if I had, If you had a name, I name you off is a good example of that.

B&N

But that’s what language is for, language is to wrestle with all. And we’ve seen you do it on the page in the memoir, I went back to it very, very recently, again, prepping for this. And I’m still amazed by how much you were willing to put on the page. And I think part of that was, you were young when you were writing this book, but also it needed to be done, you needed to say to these other people who were, you know, regardless of whether or not they share your exact demographic statistics, this book is going to reach a lot of people need this voice, they need the representation, they need to know that they’re not alone, they need to know that they’ve been through similar things. There are a couple of people who show up in this book that I would be perfectly happy to punt into the Hudson River and watch them float away. But, you know, we, we don’t do that. That’s rude. But I’ve thought about it and to see the shift from Saeed of Prelude to Bruise into Saeed of How We Fight for Our Lives to now Alive at the End of the World, you’re getting looser as you write yes, you’re getting looser, you’re getting anyone who follows you on social knows what your handles are, you’re getting a little more ferocious about the whole thing and and being and it’s really fun to see, it’s really fun, and you’ve done so many different things. And you know, there was the whole BuzzFeed stuff and the the whole video show that you guys were doing that AM to DM and whatnot. But to see you settle into a more mature Saeed has been really fun to watch, but it does come out of a lot of work.

That’s a lot of work and I think you know, sometimes to pull off work that feels of the moment that feels lose that feels candid and actually does probably take a lot more writing and a lot more almost like the pre-writing, pre-living, you have to be able to get yourself to that idea and to a relationship with that idea while also protecting a certain flow and with the book also it was like how do I embody this candor? How do I establish this relationship with the reader where they go, Oh, this is a different kind of Saeed but it doesn’t look like an accident, it’s not mistakes. You know if they’re in repetition or for poem like That’s Not Snow, It’s Ash in the comma, it ends mid-sentence. What do I need to do so that when Miwa gets there she doesn’t go, Oh, what’s up with the copy editing? You know, like, she goes, Oh, wow, that was a new kind of challenge. I think maybe posture, form, invoking you know Greek myths, which are really important to Prelude to Bruise you know, drawing from like the Euro Western tradition is perhaps related a bit to a kind of insecurity, a desire to say I’m in, I understand the canon and this book feels very much you know, drawing from like the Black saints is what I think of: Whitney Houston, Paul Mooney, Little Richard, Luther Vandross, almost my own canon, my own tradition, my own history, to make sense of what’s happening, now. I’m not going back to Homer, necessarily. I’m like kind of trying to create, create a new, I don’t know, a new lineage, because I feel that we’ve been betrayed by our presented histories.

B&N

Presented history is is probably the best description I’ve heard of where we are as a country right now, there’s so much manipulation of story. There’s an unwillingness to sit with the things that make you uncomfortable. And it’s not just because of the pandemic. And it’s not just because of where politics or anything like that. we are in this sort of collective moment where escapism and no disrespect to escapism, it has its place. Oh, it has its place. And there are times I have read some things recently that had been wild and fun. But you can also get a little bit of substance in there too. It doesn’t all have to be escapist. When I look at what you’re doing, I’m wondering though, how much of it is informed by place because here you are, you’re born in Memphis, you spend your childhood in Texas, you end up at school in Kentucky, then you’re on the East Coast, you’re in New York for the bulk of it. And now you’re in Columbus and it feels like you’re getting a little softer. But in all the right way, yeah, in all the right ways. I mean, this is not something that we often get to talk about in terms of masculinity, in terms of queerness. Because you do, you’re in a position where you need to protect yourself, right? In many cases, you were not safe in the places you were. So now I’m looking at this. And I’m like, Oh, is that part of it, though? Is Columbus part of it? Is it we’re living in this very strange moment? And yet, it’s possible for you to be a little softer and a little gentler with yourself.

Yeah, I mean, I think the the Saeed, the voice, the narrator of these poems, I think it’s interesting. I think part of the reason he’s approaching the subjects the way he does is that he is more tender, he’s more vulnerable. And he’s listening to himself more, I mean, that that was kind of part of it. And you know, that, How We Fight for Our Lives, Alive at the End of the World, part of the idea that this is about the afterlife of grief, the 10 year anniversary of my mother’s death was last summer, May 2021. And so what does it mean to be 10 years from a personal apocalypse? You know, I and of course, I said in the book, but it was true. You know, I remember very vividly thinking before my mom was sick before, you know, I was like, in graduate school, years before, and I would say, if anything ever happened to her, it would be the end of my world, it just would and then, and then something happened to her and it was the end of my world. And so 10 years later, into that kind of loss into that kind of transformative relationship. It doesn’t end just, it changes significantly. Now, I’m surrounded by millions, millions of people who, of course, have— and honestly not just one loss. I mean, many people have lost, you know, so many things and not, you know, it’s just, it’s overwhelming and humbling. And so I think this, Saeed was trying to reckon with the frequencies he could hear, because of his own experience and other things he was tuned into, you know, that’s the like, that something’s wrong. And I know what it feels like when something’s wrong, you know, Black Ice, you know, that sense of sitting the Black kids in the classroom, and it’s like, something else is going on here. And my white classmates aren’t picking up on it. Why would the Black kid hone into? Well, because he has a different relationship with white supremacy, and then you’re surrounded by the calamity. And so I think out of that, it was like, Okay, how does the speaker enter the space? And I think it’s very different. It’s very, like, you know, it’s the Saeed, the boy in Prelude to Bruise would have— I don’t even want to know actually, how he would take on this because he was, you know, very isolated and isolating. And this Saeed you though he, he puts up a strong face, deeply wants to connect. I think that’s clear.

B&N

I think there’s also a lot to be said, for getting older, getting a little mellower, I mean, you could argue its technically growing up, but that’s a phrase that I just, I find that phrase problematic, I really do. I just, to see the evolution of the language and to see that they’re still thematically I mean, obviously, the three books are connected completely. I mean, they’re not just by you, but the ideas and, and the work that goes into them. But Alive, it writes into the silences in a way that you didn’t necessarily, with the earlier books, and the silences and the secrets, I’ve been playing with this idea for a little bit only because obviously, there’s so much about secrets in the memoir, and breaking through. And, you know, obviously, secrets and silences go hand in hand, but the idea that you’re pushing into that space, and saying, Hey, wait a minute, no we’re going to talk about all the things we didn’t really talk about, but we’re going to do it in a way that’s accessible. And I think that’s really important. I think there are still people who are just like, oh, poetry, ah, terrifying. Like, what do I do with this? That’s like, well, if you listen to music,

You actually should have a great relationship with poetry, most people do. What do you define as poetry? I mean, and also, you know, it’s kind of like what I was saying about like presented histories, what’s our presented understanding of poetry? I mean, you know, for many Americans, the most contemporary poets they might, for people in their 30s and 40s, actually, I don’t know what I think actually, the kids might be getting some new stuff. And I love that. I mean, you know, middle school students, and they’re talking to me about Jason Reynolds and Danez Smith and Morgan Parker.

Okay, I love that. When I was in school, I will say the closest poets, I mean, it was like Audre Lorde.. And she wasn’t even taught. She was on a test.. So she was at the end, but I mean, we didn’t get to learn about her life. And I, you know, that sent me running to the library. Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and like that generation, yep. So that’s like, bumping up against the 50s and 60s, and then otherwise, and then you’re taught that the greats are Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Shakespeare, you know, and that there is such richness there. But the problem is, the idea that’s pushed upon us is that that’s where it begins and ends. And and as you said, even then, I mean, hell, let’s go back to the 60s, let’s talk about folk music. Let’s talk about stand up comedy, you know, kind of as as a form that was developing and certainly draws from, from slam poetry. You know, it’s just when we limited then yeah, of course, we don’t see ourselves in and and, yeah, so it’s exciting to I think, write in a way that is I hope, it feels welcoming. I hope it feels inviting. I hope people quickly realize it’s a trap. Because pretty consistently, what’s happening is that I’m kind of reeling you in, and then and then all hell breaks loose. You know, there’s The Dead Dozens, so it’s kind of pulling from the tradition of the dozens and the “yo mama” jokes, you know, where people go, Oh, okay. And then and then it’s where those those jokes go is pretty astounding. And it was really fun to write because I, even for myself, it was like using this using the dozens as a tradition, for example, as opposed to the sonnet. Look what it did to me look what it got me to say I mean, where it ends is wild. And I love that I love that. I think, for me, the joy of the book, is that part of what you’re seeing that you don’t see in my other work is a deeper relationship with humor.. And with Black history than I think I’ve gotten to embody in my writing, and it it came out of desperation, you know, this moment, like, I felt like I had to where do I go to like, actually, for solace, and it was that deep, well of Black laughter, Black humor, of laughing to keep from crying, and from again, like tapping into a deeper lineage. And there was something really comforting about spending time with, you know, because I did a lot of research for the poems that are about these historical figures and to think of someone like Diahann Carroll, you know, who I feel is elegance. embodied. Like American elegance, period. You know, her picture should be in the dictionary next to the word and then to see like, how angry just disgusted she was with with her treatment with the role she was having to play. She hated Los Angeles, because to her Los Angeles was about Hollywood. And Hollywood rejected her because she was black, which is why she loved New York and the stage and, and so to go to use, like an elegant figure like her, I mean, I couldn’t even imagine her without a fur coat, and pearl necklaces. And her just being like, It’s just, it’s incredible. And I don’t know, I think it helps me feel less alone, which is what I always want for myself and, and hope for readers too.

B&N

Let’s talk about your reading life for a second. I mean, I know you mentioned doing research for this book. But research and reading life are not the same thing.

Very different. Thank you for distinguishing.

B&N

They are not the same thing. And I say this as someone who produces two or three episodes of a show every week. Not the same thing. So I want to talk about Saeed as a reader, okay, I want to talk about what makes your heart sing what makes what you reach for first what you reach for when you’re in a bad mood, what you try to do when you’re just reading.

I don’t think I read for pleasure very much. Even when I think I am. There’s there’s a hidden agenda. And I have to I have to own that. I would say lately, biographies. I have been fascinating, and forgive me because I’m about to forget a bunch of wonderful authors names but Furious Cool. It’s a biography of Richard Pryor written by two brothers. Its incredible. And, and I realized it was it was the kind of biography I want where of course it’s about Richard Pryor. But it’s Richard Pryor also as a mirror of what’s going on in America. So like, it’s up. It’s like I learned so much more about vaudeville, for example, and the comedy circuit in Illinois when he was a kid. Through him, you know, which I didn’t expect and really the lineage of, you know, learning about like, like how Dick Gregory gets us to Richard Pryor and all that. I just thought it was just really, really astounding. Um, so that I think, the pleasure of what comforts mean, connecting dots., I’m gonna go oh my god, what was that way? You know like that is exciting feeling for me. What else am I reading right now? Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson Spires, love her, love those stories. Yeah, and she’s interesting because I feel that she’s a formalist, kind of. She’s interested in that right? Like, you know, like an epistolary short story like all the stories kind of at least, you know, the ones I’m really gravitating toward, have this interest with form and upending expectation and not, you know, upending niceties and turning them into like, absurd.

B&N

I wish people who have no problems scrolling on their phones would understand that you can do a lot in a short story and really blow your mind and short stories are having a moment where some work and people get excited. I mean, Deesha Philyaw. Hello, I mean, but I just I wish more people would come to stories.

So my thing is, short stories or poems, I think there’s a very similar, you know, where people like, oh, do people reach? Or it’s like the same issue? What do you consider a short story, right? What is your relationship? Who are the names that are being celebrated when you’re in hearing range? And what are you being known, made known that’s available, you know, a lot of really great short stories defy easy categorization. I love that I liked the slipperiness of a good short story but, you know, it’s for the same reason I think I love poems. And so, yeah, I don’t know, but part of me is tired trying to drag people to water. You know? It’s like, I need to, I’m dehydrated myself. So it’s almost like, if you know, you know, there’s great stories out there.

B&N

Part of why I bring it up, though, is it’s a form that you play with, in Alive at the End of the World. And I’m so happy that of course, you made the point about poems being intertwined with short stories. And, and but this idea that you’re speaking to yourself, and the fact that you may have accidentally written a second memoir. We need to talk about this Saeed, we need to talk about accidentally writing a second memoir.

We’ve all been there. We’ve all accidentally written a second memoir.

B&N

Yes, writers have. Booksellers try not to.

Fair, fair,

B&N

Some booksellers do. I am not one of those people. But now let’s let’s talk about this for a second. Because, again, you’re writing this lockdown has happened. You’re in Columbus, we’re all sort of standing on our heads not knowing what’s next or what’s happening. And here you are, as you say, in the story, walking into your apartment, from a business trip with dragging your suitcase behind you. And there you are on the sofa.

There’s a me waiting for me on the sofa

B&N

Ok, one- yowza

Yeah, and I initially think it’s a dead body. Yeah, that’s there’s a dead me, waiting for me on the sofa. Yeah, I mean, so when the story started, I mean, well, one, it started with mischievousness, I was always, you know, again, just being like, How can I just, when.I think the reader is comfortable —how can I flip it again? Because that’s what it is, like, we don’t kind of get time to fully process before there’s another mass shooting, there’s another, you know, disastrous aspect of climate catastrophe. But two, it was it was lockdown, it was thinking about, you know, I mean, it was very reasonable it was very important and responsible to isolate, but also, you know, how do you begin to move out of that space, and then also like, grief, and there’s a line at some point in the book where I said, you know, “I made a home out of how much I missed you. And there’s no one here to tell me, I should leave.” And so this, this idea that again, 10 years and you know, like you can’t I don’t think it’s healthy. I think it’s healthy, to embrace grief to let it out. But you do have to move on the relationship does have to change, you do have to be willing to be vulnerable again, to possibly love someone else as much as you’ve loved the person you’ve lost and, and so I thought it was important in this book about the afterlife of grief to actually show me Yeah, kind of doing this work. And so yeah, I have this idea of this person who ends up in the situation where they just don’t want to leave the house because for them leaving the house is about vulnerability. It’s about putting your pain out there and having people kind of poke and prod and make demands upon it. And I was like, Oh, how interesting. What if he was able to sit with himself for a little while? And what would happen if Saeed came home from a trip and there was Saeed made out of his pain waiting on the couch? It’s just like, Oh, hi. Oh, hi. You know, and initially, I you know, because I love science fiction. And so yeah, initially, I was like, Okay, this is obviously gonna be like an ex machina one of two into what? You know, like, which actually does kind of happen a little bit. But I was thinking of like a sinister kind of almost like, the poem at the beginning with the robot, you know, kind of where, but this is the end of the book, I need to push us toward catharsis, I need to think about, what are the wisdom that we can acquire. And I thought it was actually more important for this speaker, to be given an opportunity to safely express himself, which is, I know, a bit odd because we’re writers, I am a writer, I express myself all the time, to a certain extent, but that’s not the same. That’s not the same as you know, speaking in front of an audience, right, the q&a, the people you don’t know, they haven’t had to share anything with you. But they know now that you know, some of the most intimate details of your life. And so what would that space look like for this person who could just really say what he was what’s clearly been weighing on him and he is in pain, he is suffering, you know, he’s putting on a brave face, and he’s cracking jokes constantly to kinda deflect and distract. Yeah, I love the story. I’m glad you like it.

B&N

No, I think it’s completely great. But I also I love the idea behind it. And the execution, it’s not sometimes you fall in love with an idea. And you’re like, Oh, I see where you’re— But this, it’s the perfect combination of idea and execution. And it’s just it’s an absolute delight. But here you are. And these books are what this was ’16?

Prelude to Bruise? 2014

B&N

Okay, so 2014. So eight years between them? Yeah. So and you’re recording them at the same moment? Obviously, you are not we have we have firmly established you are not the same person for these two collections. But what did you learn about your work and yourself as you’re recording these two audiobooks?

I mean, this Saeed is more settled in his body. Yeah, he’s he’s, it’s the looseness is and is from, from a sense of freedom. A sense of ease and confidence like me, you know, all hell is breaking loose, but I know who I am this. This isn’t a Saeed who’s unsure about that. And Prelude to Bruise is very much about someone who feels unsure who feels which me am I supposed to be right now? What, what what me am I supposed to wear to get you to love me or to get you to not hurt me, which is why Prelude to Bruise, you know, I needed to create an avatar because it’s, I mean, that is and where the book goes, I mean, is it goes to some pretty horrific, horrific places. And so even in the writing, I think I needed an avatar. So it’s, you know, it’s a character named boy, it’s not actually me, even on the page to create a bit of distance. But I will say, and we I was still, like, astounded by the pain, you know, it’s really heartbreaking. And I remember I mean, it’s what animates this book, Prelude to Bruise, you know, I would finish a poem and be like, what happens? Oh, no, where did what I just were just, you know, and so I would almost always, like at least start the next poem, because I was worried like, it was almost like, I wanted to jump into the page. And I was surprised I think earlier this summer recording the audio book, how potent that feeling still is, I think, that struck me a lot like the the need the deep need. Where’s this? This person? Doesn’t? I don’t know. I mean, of course, it’s closer. It’s closer and more recent. So yeah, interesting. Eight years from now to be, but this person isn’t exactly like, please, now.

B&N

Oh, no. I mean, one of the things I appreciate too, is this, playing with these sort of sci fi tropes, as it were, I mean, Black and Brown people in America, the amount of wearing of masks that happens, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to walk around and not feel. I mean, that would be delightful.

Which is really maybe part of what it is right. You know, just to check out or do you just send another version of yourself out there.

B&N

Even with Prelude to Bruise even before the memoir, The grief, rightfully so, the grief was center stage. And now it feels like grief can be experienced as the thing that ebbs and flows and It is true. I mean, when it first happens, it is the worst thing that has ever happened. Like it just, it’s such a visceral moment in any person’s experience when you just get hit by the thing that you really don’t ever want to have happen. But with time, it doesn’t hold you hostage in the same way.

It doesn’t have to. And that’s why I think with Alive at the End of the World. It’s a bit of, it’s like the floodwaters are finally receding. And if you’ve ever seen, you know, a community after, it’s actually it’s pretty gross. Yeah, there’s a lot of work to be done. You know, what can be salvaged? How do we begin to rebuild? I mean, you know, and so I think, yeah, that is the work of this Saeed. It’s not coming into age, it’s, well, what now? Okay, I’m finally settling into the realization I need to move on. What now?

B&N

Before I let you go, though, I do want to plug a project of yours that I am so personally invested in, you have a podcast coming up called Vibe Check, and by the time this show airs Vibe Check will have been on the air for a couple of weeks because this is tied into the pub date. So we’re taping this in August

Vibe Check is a new weekly news and culture podcast that you can get wherever you get your podcasts wherever you listen. With me, Sam Sanders and Zack Stafford were three friends who’ve known each other for a while. And it’s always been a delight. Because the three of us have always been in media sometimes working together, sometimes coming together for interviews. Sam, when he was hosting, It’s Been a Minute, would have me on or have Zack on. And we don’t say like, Wouldn’t it be nice if we would do something together? And but you know, the timing was never right. Busy people are busy people. But then the pandemic happened. And the group text as I think became true for many of us, needs to change. And it really became like a no, how are you actually doing? Like, we can keep kiki-ing and sending memes but like, how are you doing? Do you need anything became the conversation. And that was really important. And I think you know, even as Black queer men, we still have that work to do with vulnerability as well. It may be different. And so out of that, we just like kind of kept talking and kept talking. And then it was like, Wait, this is the podcast: Vibe Check. This is what it is. And so it’s about news and culture and how it all feels, you know, so we’re not here to explain, you know, to walk you through the FBI raid and read you know that no, it’s about like, well, how does it feel for there to be a raid on the, the residence of the former US president? Right? Did you ever think something like this would happen? What are your expectations? You know, I think we’re getting and it feels very much connected to kind of the ideas in Alive at the End of the World, you know, you’re getting all this stuff thrown at you constantly. And then you’re sitting in the quiet those quiet mornings, where you’re like, frozen, you know, and you feel isolated, kind of abandoned by conversation. And so the hope is that you feel brought in, and we’re going to laugh and we’re going to be smart together. And what I really like is we’re keeping it simple. So we’re only talking about two subjects each episode, because we really want time to talk about this. Yeah, maybe change our minds, maybe persuade one another. You know what I mean? Like, I just, I just feel like I’m not naming names, but a lot of podcasts where it’s like, people are just waiting to talk. They’re not really listening. They don’t think of conversation as an art like any other, you know, form. I giggle sometimes when I think about like, you know, I’m like, Man right now Beyonce, she’s walking around, and she’s got like, a laptop full of music videos and music, like Will we ever get to you know, like, she must just be chuckling. And lately, that’s how I felt just like walking around like listening to this lovely little podcast. I’m so excited.

B&N

I also love the idea that it’s the three of you. And there’s just this idea of being able to parse through what is happening in the moment and give us context I think what we’ve been missing so as so many of us have been missing is the context because we’re not willing to expand beyond the thing that makes us uncomfortable. And I love the idea that weekly you guys will be in our ears are saying Did you notice? Did you notice? Because that to me is why we read, it’s why you write, it’s it’s the context.

It’s the connecting the dots?

B&N

Yeah, and that’s the best part of all of us Saeed Jones, I love you to bits you know this, Alive at the End of the World is out now. This is the best thing ever.

Thank you

Poured Over