The New Yorker: Poetry

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 waver...

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 Lette...

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:...

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, s...

Richie Hofmann joins Kevin Young to read “Twilight” by Henri Cole, and his own poem “French Novel” 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 more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 more about your ad choices. Visi...

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 Hender...

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 more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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, an...

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 more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 more about yo...

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 more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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...

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 more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adcho...

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 more about your ad ch...

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 more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 more about your 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 Ch...

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 more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a special episode of the Poetry Podcast, Kimiko Hahn, Monica Youn, Paul Tran, and Megan Fernandes join Kevin Young to read their work, and to discuss Asian-American poetics and the role of poetry in our tumultuous times. Kimiko Hahn, a distinguished professor at Queens College, City University of New York, has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society...

Toi Derricotte joins Kevin Young to read “We Feel Now a Largeness Coming On,” by Tracy K. Smith, and her own poem “I give in to an old desire.” Derricotte is a poet, memoirist, and co-founder, with Cornelius Eady, of the literary organization Cave Canem. Her honors include the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry and the Paterson Poetry Prize for Sustained Literary Achievement; in 2020, she received the...

Margaret Atwood joins Kevin Young to read “A Stranger,” by Saeed Jones, and her own poem “Flatline.” Atwood, a prolific poet and novelist, is known for brilliant books such as “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Blind Assassin.” Her many distinctions include the Los Angeles Times Innovator’s Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, the pen Center U.S.A.’s lifetime-achievement award, and not one but two Booker Pri...

Arthur Sze joins Kevin Young to read “The Problem of Describing Trees,” by Robert Hass, and his own poem “Vectors.” Sze has received the Landon Literary Award, the Jackson Poetry Prize and, in 2019, the National Book Award in Poetry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices