Readings and conversation with The New Yorker's poetry editor, Kevin Young.
Jericho Brown joins Kevin Young to read, “When,” by Elizabeth Alexander, and his own poem, “Colosseum.” Jericho Brown, who received the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his collection “The Tradition.” He’s a 2024 MacArthur Fellow and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
This year, The New Yorker turns one hundred years old, and, to celebrate the occasion, we’re publishing an anthology: “ A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker, 1925-2025 .” Deborah Garrison, a poet and an editor at Knopf, who worked closely with The New Yorker on this exciting project, joins Kevin Young to discuss the anthology. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Dobby Gibson joins Kevin Young to read “ I have slept in many places, for years on mattresses that entered ,” by Diane Seuss, and his own poem “ This Is a Test of the Federal Emergency Management Agency Wireless Warning System .” Gibson is the author of five poetry collections, including, most recently, “ Hold Everything .” He’s also the recipient of fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board. Learn about your ad cho...
Rae Armantrout joins Kevin Young to read “ Mother, ” by Dorothea Lasky, and her own poem “ Finally .” Armantrout’s many books include “ Go Figure ,” “ Finalists ,” “ Conjure ,” and “ Wobble .” Her collection “ Versed ” won a National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Jim Moore joins Kevin Young to read “ I wonder if I will miss the moss ,” by Jane Mead, and his own poem “ Mother .” Moore has published eight poetry collections, including, most recently, “ Prognosis .” He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and multiple Minnesota Book Awards. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Amber Tamblyn joins Kevin Young to read “ The Dahlias ,” by Didi Jackson, and her own poem “ This Living .” Tamblyn, a writer, director, and actor, is the creator of the newsletter “Listening in the Dark” and the editor of an anthology of the same title. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Valzhyna Mort joins Kevin Young to read “ Testimonies ” by Victoria Amelina, which Mort translated from the Ukrainian, and “ Map ,” by Wisława Szymborska, which was translated, from the Polish, by Clare Cavanagh. Mort’s collection “Music for the Dead and Resurrected” won the 2021 International Griffin Poetry Prize and the 2022 UNT Rilke Prize. Her other honors include a 2021 Rome Prize in literature and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the Amy Clampitt Fund....
Raymond Antrobus joins Kevin Young to read “ A Protactile Version of ‘Tintern Abbey,’ ” by John Lee Clark, and his own poem “ Signs, Music .” Antrobus has received the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Ted Hughes Award from the Poetry Society, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, and a Somerset Maugham Award, among other honors. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Amy Woolard joins Kevin Young to read “Via Negativa,” by Charles Wright, and her own poem “Late Shift.” Woolard, whose debut poetry collection, “Neck of the Woods,” won the 2018 Alice James Award from Alice James Books. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, she’s also a civil-rights attorney and the chief program officer for the ACLU of Virginia. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org...
We have a special episode to share with you today of the daily poetry podcast, “The Slowdown.” “The Slowdown” offers a poem and a moment of reflection in short episodes, each weekday. In this episode, host Major Jackson, reads “Chaos Theory” by Clint Smith. Major writes… “Occasionally, I try to follow the series of decisions that led me to this present, however triumphant or painful. My life wavers between fate and destiny. But then again, poetry brings me to the belief that some mysterious forc...
José Antonio Rodríguez joins Kevin Young to read “[World of the future, we thirsted](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/29/world-of-the-future-we-thirsted),” by Naomi Shihab Nye, and his own poem “[Tender](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/22/tender).” Rodríguez is a poet, memoirist, and translator whose honors include a Bob Bush Memorial Award from the Texas Institute of Letters and a Discovery Award from the Writers’ League of Texas. He teaches in the M.F.A. program at the ...
Ada Limón joins Kevin Young to read “You Belong to The World,” by Carrie Fountain, and her own poem “Hell or High Water.” Limón is the current United States Poet Laureate and the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. She’s the author of six books—including “The Carrying,” which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry—and the editor of the forthcoming anthology “You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Donika Kelly joins Kevin Young to read “ One Hundred White-Sided Dolphins on a Summer Day, ” by Mary Oliver, and her own poem “ Sixteen Center .” Kelly is the author of two poetry collections, and the recipient of an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, a Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and a Kate Tufts Discovery Award. A founding member of the collective Poets at the End of the World, she teaches at the University of Iowa. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Richie Hofmann joins Kevin Young to read “ Twilight ” by Henri Cole, and his own poem “ French Nove l” Hofmann is the author of two collections of poetry and the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Bianca Stone joins Kevin Young to read “ Learning to Read ,” by Franz Wright, and her own poem “ What’s Poetry Like? ” Stone has published several books of poetry and poetry comics, including, most recently, “What Is Otherwise Infinite.” She runs the Ruth Stone House in Vermont, hosts the podcast “Ode & Psyche,” and serves as Editor at Large for Iterant Magazine. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Evie Shockley joins Kevin Young to read “ Hattie McDaniel Arrives at the Coconut Grove ,” by Rita Dove, and her own poem “ the blessings .” Shockley is the author of six poetry collections and the Zora Neale Hurston Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University. Her honors include the 2023 Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, a Lannan Literary Award, the Stephen Henderson Award, and, twice, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry. Learn about your ad choices: d...
Dorothea Lasky joins Kevin Young to read “Three Songs,” by Louise Bogan, and her own poem “The Green Lake.” Lasky is the author of several books of poetry and prose, including her forthcoming collection “The Shining.” She’s the co-creator, with Alex Dimitrov, of Astro Poets, and she teaches poetry at Columbia University. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Diane Mehta joins Kevin Young to read “ The Lost Art of Letter Writing ,” by Eavan Boland, and her own poem “ Landscape with Double Bow .” Mehta is the author of the poetry collection “Forest with Castanets” and the forthcoming “Tiny Extravaganzas,” and the recipient of the Peter Heinegg Literary Award, as well as of grants and fellowships from the Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation, Civitella Ranieri, and Yaddo. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Adrienne Su joins Kevin Young to read “ The Longing to Be Saved ,” by Maxine Kumin, and her own poem “ The Days .” Su is a professor and Poet-in-Residence at Dickinson College, whose work has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pushcart Prize, and the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
David Baker joins Kevin Young to read “ In Passing ,” by Stanley Plumly, and his own poem “ Six Notes .” Baker has received honors and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Theodore Roethke Memorial Foundation. He served as poetry editor of the Kenyon Review for more than twenty-five years, and he teaches at Denison University, in Ohio. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Kate Baer joins Kevin Young to read “The Morning After,” by Ellen Bass, and her own poem “Mixup.” Baer is the New York Times bestselling author of three poetry collections, including, most recently “And Yet.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
When the poet Robin Coste Lewis discovered a trove of photographs under her late grandmother’s bed, she recognized them not only as a document of her family’s history during the Great Migration, but also as a testament to Black intimacy and ingenuity across generations. From studio portraits to snapshots, tintypes to Polaroids, these pictures provide the foundation of Robin’s latest book, “To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness,” excerpts from which were published on newyorker.com. Robin Cos...
Sandra Cisneros joins Kevin Young to read “ Shelter ,” by José Antonio Rodríguez, and her own poem “ Tea Dance, Provincetown, 1982 .” Cisneros is the recipient of a 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a National Medal of Arts, the Ford Foundation’s Art of Change Fellowship, and the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Diane Seuss joins Kevin Young to read “ Ode ,” by Jane Huffman, and her own poem “ Gertrude Stein .” Seuss is the winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the same year’s National Book Critics Circle Award for her collection “frank: sonnets.” Her honors also include a Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2021 John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Saeed Jones joins Kevin Young to read “ The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart ,” by Deborah Digges, and his own poem “ A Spell to Banish Grief .” Jones’s work has received the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry, and a Stonewall Book Award. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Eileen Myles joins Kevin Young to read “ Without ,” by Joy Harjo, and their own poem “ Dissloution .” Myles has published more than twenty books of poetry and prose. Their honors include the Publishing Triangle’s 2020 Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, multiple Lambda Literary Awards, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Christian Wiman joins Kevin Young to discuss “Far from Kingdoms” and “Outside, In Fact, There Wasn't Any Change,” by Patrizia Cavalli, translated by Judith Baumel, and his own poem “Eating Grapes Downward.” Wiman is a poet, essayist, editor, and translator, whose honors include the 2016 Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, and the 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Conference on Christianity and Literature. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Amanda Gorman joins Kevin Young to read “ Declaration ,” by Tracy K. Smith, and her own poem “ Ship’s Manifest .” Gorman served as the first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate, received a 2020 Poets & Writers Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, and, in 2021, became the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Aria Aber joins Kevin Young to read “ Half Light ,” by Frank Bidart, and her own poem “ Dirt and Light .” Aber is a Whiting Award recipient, a current Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and the author of “Hard Damage,” which won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Forrest Gander joins Kevin Young to read “ Privacy ,” by Ada Limón, and his own poem “ Post-Fire Forest .” Gander is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the winner of a Pulitzer Prize for his collection “Be With.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
