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 t ... Show More
Yesterday
April Bernard Reads John Ashbery
April Bernard joins Kevin Young to read “A Worldly Country,” by John Ashbery, and her own poem “Beagle or Something.” Bernard is the author of two novels and six poetry collections—including “Blackbird Bye Bye,” which won the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, ... Show More
42m 20s
Dec 22
Patricia Lockwood Reads Elizabeth Bishop
Patricia Lockwood joins Kevin Young to read “In the Waiting Room,” by Elizabeth Bishop, and her own poem “Love Poem Like We Used to Write It.” Lockwood is the author of the novels “No One Is Talking About This” and “Will There Ever Be Another You,” along with two poetry collectio ... Show More
45m 29s
Nov 26
Traci Brimhall Reads Thomas Lux
<p>Traci Brimhall joins Kevin Young to read “<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/06/magazine19970728refrigerator-1957"><strong>Refrigerator, 1957</strong></a>,” by Thomas Lux, and her own poem “<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/08/love-poem-witho ... Show More
44m 29s
Jan 2025
Diannely Antigua — Another Poem about God, but Really It’s about Me
“You would’ve made a lousy nun.” The narrator of Diannely Antigua’s “Another Poem about God, but Really It’s about Me” overhears these words, and they jolt her into contrasting her life experience with the limited archetypes offered by her church — good daughter, good sister, hol ... Show More
16m 21s
Apr 2025
Let Yourself Rage With Poet Laureate Ada Limón
<p>As U.S. poet laureate, Ada Limón has had a far-reaching impact. She has visited readers and writers across the country, installed poems at majestic sites in national parks, and she even wrote a poem that’s engraved inside a NASA spacecraft on its way to Jupiter.</p><p>Today on ... Show More
34m 35s
Dec 2024
Robert Hayden — Those Winter Sundays
What sacrifices were made by your parents when you were a child? How did you think about them as they were happening? And how do you think about them now? In his poem “Those Winter Sundays,” Robert Hayden holds space for a weighted childhood memory and the regret, love, and pain ... Show More
12m 18s
Dec 2024
Kinsale Drake — Put on that KTNN
In Kinsale Drake’s poem “Put on that KTNN,” she writes about driving to a hometown as a familiar station crackles to life on the car radio. From this corner of America, she creates her own country music — of Navajo voices alongside Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn, of drumbeats and g ... Show More
14m 56s
Aug 2024
1180: The Gardener 85 by Rabindranath Tagore
<p>Today’s poem is The Gardener 85 by Rabindranath Tagore.</p><br/><p>The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Poetry has a way of collapsing time, and by working the senses, having us experience an era. In the blues rhythms of Langston Hughes’ po ... Show More
6m 17s
Nov 2024
Craig Arnold's "Meditation on a Grapefruit"
<p>Craig Arnold, born November 16, 1967 was an American poet and professor. His first book of poems, <em>Shells</em> (1999), was selected by W.S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. His many honors include the 2005 Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize Fellowship in literature, the ... Show More
9m 13s