Forcing myself to read my work out loud, I think makes things tighter ultimately.

You can have 12 great lines of poetry, but if you read it out loud and it feels lateral,

lateral, lateral, lateral, lateral, lateral,

you have to do some, you can figure out, oh, it's just these three lines. You don't need the

12.

Welcome back to Working. I'm your host, Karen Hahn. And I'm your other host, Isaac,

Butler. Hi, Isaac. How are you? I'm going to go with tired tired. Yeah. That's how I am tired. How are you? Yeah, I feel the same way. It's been a weirdly long week, even though, like, but not for like a really good reason. Because you did so much epic trick or treating? I wish, I wish. Did you do a costume? Any costumes going on? Yeah. My boyfriend and I went as I was Ricky Joop and he was Gene Jacket from Nope. Awesome. My family went as Harry Potter characters at my daughter's insistence. So she was Harry Potter. I was Snape. But because I was Snape, I just figured out that we should do Alan Rickman themes every year. And like next year, I could be Alan Rickman and die hard. Yeah. Yeah. She could be Bruce Willis. And maybe Anne could be Nakatomi Tower. I was about to say exactly that. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So who did you talk to for this week's episode? I talked to the wonderful poet Jay Hope Stein. And so that there's no confusion during the interview, she just goes by Jenny in everyday life.

But Jay Hope Stein is her professional name, and she is the author of a recent poetry collection on becoming a mother that's really wonderful, titled Little Astronaut.

Oh, wow.

Well, I cannot wait to hear your conversation.

But before we get to that, what can we look forward to in the Slate Plus segment this

week?

There's a lot in the Slate Plus segment this week.

We've been very generous with our Slate Plus listeners.

You know, I thought Little Astronaut is so conceptually unified.

It is just about pregnancy and early parenting and marriage in the midst of all that. So I just wanted to know what she did with all the ideas that weren't right for the book while she was writing the book. And that led to a really wide reaching conversation about Greek myths, the ethics of writing about your family. You know, if you're not into poetry and you're kind of

intimidated by it where you might start, all sorts of things like that. So, so there's a lot

going on this week. Well, that's fascinating. And Slate Plus members will hear that at the end of the

episode, but if you are not a Slate Plus member, but want to hear that segment, why not join Slate Plus?

As a member, you will get no ads on any of our podcasts,

unlimited reading on the Slate site,

and member exclusive episodes and segments from our show

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