logo
episode-header-image
Apr 2025
41m 30s

David St. John Reads Larry Levis

WNYC STUDIOS AND THE NEW YORKER
About this episode

David St. John joins Kevin Young to read “Picking Grapes in an Abandoned Vineyard,” by Larry Levis, and his own poem “The Shore.” St. John is the author of many poetry collections and the recipient of honors including the Rome Fellowship and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the O. B. Hardison Prize from the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the George Drury Smith Award from Beyond Baroque. He’s also the editor of “Swirl & Vortex,” a volume of collected poems by the late Larry Levis, forthcoming in 2026.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Up next
Jul 23
Sasha Debevec-McKenney Reads Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Sasha Debevec-McKenney joins Kevin Young to read “Hammond B3 Organ Cistern,” by Gabrielle Calvocoressi, and her own poem “Kaepernick.” Debevec-McKenney is the author of the new poetry collection “Joy Is My Middle Name.” She was a Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Univers ... Show More
38m 47s
Jun 25
Megan Fernandes Reads Hala Alyan
Megan Fernandes joins Kevin Young to read “Half-Life in Exile,” by Hala Alyan, and her own poem “On Your Departure to California.” Fernandes’s books include “I Do Everything I’m Told” and “Good Boys.” Her poems have been published widely, and she’s received fellowships from the Y ... Show More
31m 25s
May 21
Erika Meitner Reads Philip Levine
Erika Meitner joins Kevin Young to read “What Work Is,” by Philip Levine, and her own poem “To Gather Together.” Meitner’s books include “Useful Junk” and “Holy Moly Carry Me,” which won the 2018 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry. She is currently a Mandel Institute Cultural L ... Show More
36m 27s
Recommended Episodes
Oct 2023
554 John Ashbery (with Jess Cotton) | My Last Book with David van den Berg
Poetry! Poetry! Poetry! After taking a look at Emily Dickinson's Poem #1 94 ("Title divine - is mine!"), Jacke talks to Cambridge University's Jess Cotton, whose biography of John Ashbery (John Ashbery: A Critical Life) charts Ashbery's rise from a minor avant-garde figure to the ... Show More
58m 2s
Jun 2023
Rowan Ricardo Phillips — Never Again Would Birds’ Song Be the Same
Have you ever had a private moment — perhaps in the middle of the night — in a large city? When it just seems like it’s you and the great dreaming metropolis? Rowan Ricardo Phillips brings us into a memory he can’t forget, complete with a Wu-Tang Clan soundtrack.Rowan Ricardo Phi ... Show More
12m 58s
Feb 2025
Fady Joudah — [...]
Even though Palestinian-American Fady Joudah’s poem is sparingly titled “[...],” an ellipsis surrounded by brackets, this work itself is psychologically dense. Through crisp lines and language, it wrestles with the nature of human ambivalence — about things like fear, desire, dis ... Show More
12m 55s
Oct 2024
Remix! Jericho Brown
We're revisiting our 2021 interview with the poet Jericho Brown, who this week was named a MacArthur Fellow-- one of the highest honors in the arts and humanities. He and Jordan talk about the great mystery of why we desire the things we desire; about oration and the poets he rea ... Show More
49m 29s
Nov 2024
Live! Garth Greenwell
This week, we bring you a live interview with Garth Greenwell, conducted in October 2024 at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. Garth talks about growing up in Kentucky assuming that he would die young, the teacher who gave him a path toward being an artist, and the doggedness with which ... Show More
55m 34s
Mar 2025
Paul Theroux Reads V. S. Pritchett
Paul Theroux joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “The Necklace,” by V. S. Pritchett, which was published in The New Yorker in 1958. Theroux’s nonfiction books include “The Great Railway Bazaar” and “On the Plain of Snakes: A Mexican Journey.” A winner of the James Tait Bla ... Show More
1h 5m
Dec 2024
Taylor Johnson — Pennsylvania Ave. SE
When you look at people who are younger than you — particularly teenagers — does your mind ever take you back to yourself at their age? Taylor Johnson’s poem “Pennsylvania Ave. SE” performs this feat of time travel, going from a glimpse of two boys on bicycles to a haunting sense ... Show More
13m 21s
Jul 2024
1157: from “Requiem 1935-1940” by Anna Akhmatova, translated by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward
Today’s poem is from “Requiem 1935-1940” by Anna Akhmatova, translated by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “What is the role of poetry during war? Does it have a function? Then and now, poets and readers of p ... Show More
6m 25s
Dec 2024
Danielle Chapman — Trespassing with Tweens
Wonder and strangeness commingle with the commonplace and universal in Danielle Chapman’s “Trespassing with Tweens.” In a not-quite mirroring, a human mother and her children stand and watch together in awe as a great blue heron flaps in and feeds its two offspring. The pleasures ... Show More
16m 7s