The New Yorker: Poetry

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Readings and conversation with The New Yorker's poetry editor, Kevin Young.

read less

Our Editor's Take

The New Yorker: Poetry podcast exposes listeners to an impressive array of poems. Themes include everything from teenage angst to utopian dreams. The New Yorker is one of the pioneers of poetry in print journalism. Once upon a time, poems were an oral tradition. Podcasts like this one are bringing back the trend. Now, anyone can have beautiful poetry read out on air. Listeners can expect profound feelings to wash over them. Some poems are funny, and some evoke feelings of joy, sadness, and longing.

Each podcast episode features host Kevin Young and a guest poet. Young is The New Yorker's poetry editor. He is a poet, literary critic, essayist, and professor. Young started his poetry career in the Boston area. Several of his poetry collections have won awards. These include Most Way Home and The Book of Hours. He is a director at the Smithsonian Institution. The National Museum of African American History is under his purview.

Young took over hosting the podcast from Paul Muldoon. Muldoon hosted from 2014 to 2017. Between both hosts, the show has seen many poets come on to read poetry. These include Danielle Chapman, Nicole Sealey, Craig Morgan, and David Lehman. On the show, guests read a poem published in The New Yorker. Besides that, they also read their own poems. Afterward, they discuss the poem's lines, creativity, and messages. Young and his guests provide context for each of the poems.

The readings and reflections on each poem are thoughtful and insightful. With an eclectic and long guest list, the podcast offers diverse styles and perspectives. Poems read include Worsening Situation by John Ashbery and Jane Hoffman's Ode. Others are Frank Bidert's Half Light and The Morning After by Ellen Bass. The New Yorker: Poetry podcast is entertaining and an excellent resource for anyone interested in poetry.

read less

ArtsArts

Start Here

Amy Woolard Reads Charles Wright

Amy Woolard Reads Charles Wright

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.

Episodes

Amy Woolard Reads Charles Wright

Amy Woolard Reads Charles Wright

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.

Special Feature: Major Jackson reads Clint Smith on The Slowdown

Special Feature: Major Jackson reads Clint Smith on The Slowdown

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 force is at work, below, that unveils a spiritually deeper meaning to it all.”If you’d like to hear more episodes of “The Slowdown,” you can learn more at slowdownshow.org and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

José Antonio Rodríguez Reads Naomi Shihab Nye

José Antonio Rodríguez Reads Naomi Shihab Nye

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 University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley.

Ada Limón Reads Carrie Fountain

Ada Limón Reads Carrie Fountain

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.

Donika Kelly Reads Mary Oliver

Donika Kelly Reads Mary Oliver

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.

Richie Hofmann Reads Henri Cole

Richie Hofmann Reads Henri Cole

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.

Bianca Stone Reads Franz Wright

Bianca Stone Reads Franz Wright

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.

Evie Shockley Reads Rita Dove

Evie Shockley Reads Rita Dove

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.

Dorothea Lasky Reads Louise Bogan

Dorothea Lasky Reads Louise Bogan

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.

Diane Mehta Reads Eavan Boland

Diane Mehta Reads Eavan Boland

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.

Adrienne Su Reads Maxine Kumin

Adrienne Su Reads Maxine Kumin

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.

David Baker Reads Stanley Plumly

David Baker Reads Stanley Plumly

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.

Kate Baer Reads Ellen Bass

Kate Baer Reads Ellen Bass

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.”

Tributaries: A Conversation with Robin Coste Lewis

Tributaries: A Conversation with Robin Coste Lewis

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 Coste Lewis formerly served as poet laureate of Los Angeles, and her debut collection, “Voyage of the Sable Venus,” won the 2015 National Book Award for poetry.

Sandra Cisneros Reads José Antonio Rodríguez

Sandra Cisneros Reads José Antonio Rodríguez

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.

Diane Seuss Reads Jane Huffman

Diane Seuss Reads Jane Huffman

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.

Saeed Jones Reads Deborah Digges

Saeed Jones Reads Deborah Digges

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.

Eileen Myles Reads Joy Harjo

Eileen Myles Reads Joy Harjo

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.

Christian Wiman Reads Patrizia Cavalli

Christian Wiman Reads Patrizia Cavalli

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.

Amanda Gorman Reads Tracy K. Smith

Amanda Gorman Reads Tracy K. Smith

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.