Ms. Tippett: Well, I feel like you’ve said this in a number of ways, but I do want to just kind of ask, as we close, how you would start to put words around this vast question of what this sweep of your experience as a memoirist, with the life you’ve lived as a poet and just as a human being — how you would start to talk about what you’ve learned, or are learning still, about what it means to be human, maybe that’s surprised you, as you’ve gone along.
Ms. Karr: There’s more joy than I knew. And the less scared I am, the more joy there is. The less in my head I am, the more south of my neck I live my life. The more awake I am, the more just simple joy there is. People always talk about the sunset and all that. I don’t get any of that; I have zero feeling for nature. But just watching the old lady with the walker on my way to the studio get off the bus in front of me, and just watching how — it was just so heroic. I was just looking at it, thinking, Homer wrote about this, just somebody struggling to move down the damn road, with all this effort, all by her little ancient self. Good for her, you know? It was just pretty to watch.
{Krista Tippett in conversation with poet and memoirist Mary Karr.}
