Closing Out Poetry Month with Morning Edition

Summary

All Of It: Closing Out Poetry Month with Morning Edition

Host: Alison Stewart
Producers: Amanda Razon & Veronica Duvallier
Release Date: April 30, 2025

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Introduction to Poetry Month Recap

In the final episode of April, Alison Stewart hosts a special edition of All Of It on WNYC, marking the conclusion of National Poetry Month. This episode serves as a retrospective of the Morning Edition team's ambitious poetry series, which encouraged listeners to submit their own poems aligned with changing weekly themes. With an overwhelming response, the producers navigated through an impressive volume of submissions, selecting standout pieces to feature on air.

Overview of Submissions

Producers Amanda Razon and Veronica Duvallier discuss the scale and diversity of submissions received during Poetry Month.

Veronica Duvallier (02:31): "We received somewhere between 400 and 450 submissions this year."

The submissions predominantly hailed from New York City's five boroughs, extending to neighboring areas like Long Island, Westchester, and even reaching international participants from Ireland and Japan. This geographic diversity underscored the widespread engagement and passion for poetry within and beyond the city.

Selection Process and Weekly Themes

Amanda and Veronica elucidate the thoughtful selection process, balancing aesthetic appeal with content diversity.

Veronica Duvallier (03:24): "We are always looking for poems that sound good. We want folks to have great sounding poem, great voices..."

The Poetry Month series was structured around four distinct weekly themes:

1. Literary Memoir
2. History
3. Sci-Fi and Fantasy
4. Mystery

Each theme provided a flexible framework, allowing poets of all ages and backgrounds to explore and express their creativity without restrictive boundaries.

Exploring the Themes

1. Literary Memoir

The memoir theme encouraged personal reflection and storytelling, enabling poets to delve into their lives or those of loved ones.

Amanda Razon (07:28): "People are always looking for opportunities to be reflective, I think, and to talk a little bit about themselves."

Featured Poem: Infinite Rounds by Tamara Plotnick (06:04)

Tamara recounts nostalgic memories of family and personal growth, weaving vivid imagery and emotional depth.

Tamara Plotnick (08:43): "...playing at standing precariously on the raft, bare chested, his freckles reflected in the Hudson..."

2. History

Listeners explored historical events and personal histories, blending past and present narratives.

Veronica Duvallier (10:06): "We got a lot of Poems about fires and specifically people using these local history events like fires."

Featured Poem: Landscape Landscape by Barbara Novak (11:26)

Barbara reflects on the interplay between personal loss and historical calamities, creating a contemplative atmosphere through precise language.

Barbara Novak (11:26): "I seek a bridge between the thens, the nows being hard to find..."

3. Sci-Fi and Fantasy

This theme emerged as a popular choice, with poets using speculative elements to comment on contemporary issues.

Veronica Duvallier (18:31): "People really kind of took it into one of two directions... dragons... robots and flying cars and AI..."

Featured Poem: Photosynthesis by Alaia Don Johnson (19:40)

Alaia merges scientific concepts with poetic imagery, crafting a narrative that bridges human existence with the cosmos.

Alaia Don Johnson (19:40): "We are four billion evenings, a hundred trillion deaths... It came from the stars eons away and is for us the ever present."

4. Mystery

Poets tackled the enigmatic, often bending the definition of mystery to explore personal and societal questions.

Amanda Razon (21:52): "People really kind of like stretch the boundaries of what a mystery is."

Featured Poem: It's a Mystery to Me by Sandhya Nankhani (22:46)

Sandhya intertwines childhood curiosities with broader reflections on censorship and the enduring quest for knowledge.

Sandhya Nankhani (22:46): "Those who are afraid know this truth too... curiosity is the only thing that keeps us alive..."

Listener Engagement and Insights

The episode features a heartfelt listener call from Lisa of Newark, New Jersey, who shares her admiration for local poet Jasmine Manns. Lisa highlights Jasmine's conversational tonality and her ability to mirror everyday conversations and pop culture phenomena in her work.

Lisa (14:56): "Jasmine's poetry speaks to me so deeply because of its tonality, and it's written in a way in which I would speak like I would naturally speak..."

Producers Amanda and Veronica reflect on lessons learned throughout the series, emphasizing the importance of specificity in poetry—a concept reiterated by a guest poet, Kimiko Han.

Veronica Duvallier (16:43): "The clearer and the more precise of an image you can create for your listeners, the more likely they are to connect with the poem."

Trends and Observations

Amanda and Veronica note distinct trends within each theme. The sci-fi and fantasy submissions were notably assertive and personal, while memoir and history pieces often provided introspective and reflective narratives. The mystery theme showcased a playful expansion of the genre, allowing poets to incorporate humor and abstract concepts.

Amanda Razon (21:28): "The sci fi ones were very like very strong... very confident and almost like very authoritative..."

Accessing Submitted Poems

For listeners eager to explore the full collection of submitted poems, Alison Stewart directs them to WNYC's dedicated poetry page.

Veronica Duvallier (24:22): "WNYC.org Poetry. Nice and easy."

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Conclusion

As National Poetry Month draws to a close, this episode of All Of It celebrates the vibrant and diverse contributions of WNYC's listening community. Through personal anecdotes, featured readings, and insightful discussions, Alison Stewart and her team underscore the profound impact of poetry in reflecting and shaping culture.

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Notable Quotes:

• Veronica Duvallier (02:31): "We received somewhere between 400 and 450 submissions this year."
• Amanda Razon (07:28): "People are always looking for opportunities to be reflective..."
• Barbara Novak (11:26): "I seek a bridge between the thens, the nows being hard to find..."
• Alaia Don Johnson (19:40): "It came from the stars eons away and is for us the ever present."
• Sandhya Nankhani (22:46): "Curiosity is the only thing that keeps us alive..."
• Lisa (14:56): "Jasmine's poetry speaks to me so deeply because of its tonality..."
• Veronica Duvallier (16:43): "The clearer and the more precise of an image you can create..."

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For more insights and to read the full collection of listener-submitted poems, visit WNYC.org/Poetry.

Transcript

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[Alison Stewart]

This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alan. Hi, I'm Alison Stewart. It's the last day of April, which means the last day of Poetry Month. And when you've tuned into WNYC during this during the mornings this April, you've probably heard Michael Hill introduce some of your poems on Morning Edition. This month, our Morning Edition team invited you to submit your poetry based around a changing weekly theme. And some of the submissions were selected to be aired. The team got so many submissions they couldn't possibly air them all. So we're going to take an opportunity on the final day of Poetry Month to listen to some deep cuts. For example, here's a poem submitted by listener Katie Kempel.

[Katie Kempel]

Hello, this is Katie Kempel and I have a poem for you about my father, Patrick Kempel, who grew up in yonkers in the 40s, 50s and 60s and passed away about eight years ago. It's called Heart Failure as River Sticks. If my father had made it from his condo to an ambulance to a hospital, would he still be here, the river of his blood filled with flotsam and jetsam. Instead, I picture him making that journey to the afterlife on a raft down the Hudson of his life, past Kingston, Poughkeepsie and the Newburgh Beacon Bridge, past Westchester and back home to Yonkers again, playing his horn proud and loud. Playing at standing precariously on the raft, bare chested, his freckles reflected in the Hudson, joined their brothers in the stars.

[Alison Stewart]

This project was produced by Amanda Rozone and Veronica Duvallier. They both produce morning edition on WAnyc. And they're here with me now in studio to recap the series. Welcome.

[Amanda Razon]

Hey, Alison.

[Veronica Duvallier]

Hi, Alison.

[Alison Stewart]

All right, the series comes to a close today. What were the final numbers?

[Veronica Duvallier]

So we received somewhere between 400 and 450 submissions this year.

[Michael Hill]

Wow.

[Katie Kempel]

That's great.

[Veronica Duvallier]

It is an unfathomable number every single year.

[Alison Stewart]

Where did the variety of people come from? Did the most come from Manhattan? Did they come from the Bronx? Did they come from Brooklyn?

[Amanda Razon]

Manhattan is always overrepresented. There's lots of submissions from Manhattan. I would say the five boroughs. That was really the concentration. We also got a lot of submissions from New Jersey, a lot from Long island to mostly Nassau county, some from Westchester as well. We always get super excited when we get from kind of far away places. I think we had two submitters from Ireland.

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Wow.

[Amanda Razon]

We had one submitter from Japan and one, you know, in the country. But West Coast, California, which is always really cool. It just kind of puts everything in perspective of like where our listeners are situated.

[Michael Hill]

Well, first of all, congratulations on that next submission. Veronica, how did you decide which poems Michael Hill would introduce for Poetry Month?

[Veronica Duvallier]

So it is definitely an art and not a science. We are always looking for poems that sound good. We want folks to have great sounding poem, great voices, and then we start screening kind of for content. We want poems from like atypical poets. We love when we get professional folks who are submitting poems that will be published in their upcoming chapbook or in their upcoming collection. But we love when a bus driver sends us a poem or a seven year old sends us a poem. We really love when 7 year old sends us poems. So we're trying to balance the needs of radio with like the needs of wanting to hear interesting people.

[Michael Hill]

Amanda, there was an overarching theme this year. Each theme was literary memoir, history, sci fi and fantasy and mystery. Where did the idea for this to steep Morning Edition poetry and literature come from?

[Amanda Razon]

It was really Veronica's idea, but I think we really wanted to give an. First of all, we wanted them to change weekly because our listeners at this point, they know Poetry Month, they know the cadence, they understand the assignment. You know, we don't need to explain a whole ton. So we thought it would be a fun challenge to change them weekly. And you know, literature is something that like intersects with anybody who's interested in the news, interested in local stories, national stories and stuff like that. So I think the, you know, and Veronika, you could speak to it more. I think it includes everybody. It includes people of all ages, it includes people of all backgrounds. A seven year old can come up with like a history poem, but so can somebody who's 97. You know, everybody has their own history, so I think it kind of appeals to a lot of people. Do you want to add to that?

[Veronica Duvallier]

Yeah. It's also not overly prescriptive. It's not saying you must write a poem about the weather. People can take fantasy in any direction they want or memoir in any direction that they want. It was more of a starting point instead of a set of narrow boundaries.

[Alison Stewart]

For this year, I'm speaking with WNYC Morning Edition producers Amanda Rosson. And Veronica the Vallee. Did I get your last name right?

[Amanda Razon]

Yeah. Roseanne.

[Alison Stewart]

Okay. And Veronica Duvallier. We're marking the last day of National Poetry Month by recapping morning editions poetry series, where they invited you to submit your own poems to potentially air on their broadcast. Let's open the phone lines to put people. What is your favorite poem and why? Who's your favorite poet? Why do you love poetry compared to any other medium? 2124-339692-21243. So, Veronica, what were some of the trends you observed as they came over? Things tend to come in trends.

[Veronica Duvallier]

They really do. I think every week tended to have its own kind of set of things that kept popping up. For example, memoir was really where people delved most into their own lives, which is kind of obvious. But we gave them alternatives. We said, you can write as if you were someone else. You can write about your loved ones. But people were really interested in using memoir as a space for personal reflection. Jump forward into the future. We had Sci Fi and Fantasy Week, and a lot of people sent in poems about artificial intelligence that week, which is interesting. Maybe something that we expected, but not to the magnitude that we got it. Maybe 10, 15 poems about AI mystery week, I think, is the one that people interpreted most liberally. Sure, we got a few noir poems. Sure. But we also got people being like, I like the word mystery, and I'm gonna use it seven times in a poem. And I loved it even still. So those were kind of some of the big ones, we noticed.

[Alison Stewart]

Did you get any poems written by AI when they sent them in?

[Veronica Duvallier]

Oh, man.

[Amanda Razon]

I don't know if I would be able to tell, which is kind of.

[Veronica Duvallier]

Scary, but maybe no one fessed up to it. No one fessed up to it in the inbox. It's a secret to us.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's talk about memoir. That was the first week's theme. Amanda, why do you think memoir makes for good poetic inspiration?

[Amanda Razon]

I think people are always looking for opportunities to be reflective, I think, and to talk a little bit about themselves. And I have to shout out Michael Hill, because that was really. He really pushed for that one of really wanting people to have the space to reflect on themselves. I think it's kind of like, you know, I don't want to say it's the easiest one, but it's kind of like writing in your diary, essentially. And maybe people, you know, it's possible people already had some ideas jotted down on paper, but, yeah, that opportunity for reflection, whether they're reflecting on their own lives or somebody else's. I think the intro poem that you played, I think that was part of the memoir theme.

[Veronica Duvallier]

It was.

[Amanda Razon]

And that was on her father, right? She was reflecting on her father, which I thought, that's. That's really cool. I often think about my dad used to want to write a memoir. And he, you know, he never did. He still has the opportunity to, but I had thought. I was like, what if I write your memoir? I'm like, it would be interesting to see, you know, how I interpret your history. But, yeah, I think just giving people that platform to reflect was. Was really important to us.

[Michael Hill]

Let's listen to an example that you selected. This is from a listener in Brooklyn named Tamara. Tamara. Excuse me, Plotnik.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's listen.

[Alaia Don Johnson]

Tamara Plotnick here, living in Brooklyn. Here's my memoir poem called Infinite Rounds. Remember how we stand before your full length mirror in bikinis. My tiny belly button would gyrate, emulating the infinity swerve of your flesh hourglass. We wore our hair long, yours dyed a tawny blonde, mine brunette tinged with ancestral chestnut. How smug I felt to possess the prettiest mom on the block. Remember when I made you promise never to wear your hair in a beehive? Wriggling in that wedge of space into the looking glass, we chant, meet you round the corner in a half an hour. Again I'd shout, I wanted it forever and ever.

[Michael Hill]

I love the performance of that one.

[Amanda Razon]

That was great. Yeah, that. When we hear a poem like that, we're like, oh, yeah, that's, like, perfect for radio.

[Veronica Duvallier]

She really put her elbow into it.

[Michael Hill]

Sure did. Sure did. The second theme of the month was history. What were some historical moments or events that listeners were writing about?

[Amanda Razon]

We got a lot of submissions about the September 11 attacks. I don't know if you remember that. I remember that first week. Veronica and I were like, whoa. Like, maybe we should have anticipated that. But there were so many about the September 11 attacks. And people also did kind of like niche stories, like Neighborhood Histories, which I thought was pretty interesting. There was one, I forget the title, but she talked about the fires in the Pine Barrens on eastern Long Island. But when it happened in 1995, of course, they happened earlier this year as well in the same area. And so she kind of tied the past into the present. There was a lot of that kind of going back and forth, which was really interesting.

[Veronica Duvallier]

I actually have the name of that poem going down. It was called Hampton's Blaze, 1995. And, yeah, we did get a lot of Poems about fires and specifically people using these local history events like fires. We got one about an oil tank explosion to reflect about their own lives. Usually from, let's say older adults who were using a historical event to kind of probe into the past to talk about their family life or where they were at the moment, which was something I certainly didn't anticipate to get from history. Like history is personal and not just something far fetched.

[Alison Stewart]

Well, let's listen to a history themed poem that you chose today. It's by listener Barbara Novak in Rockville Center.

[Barbara Novak]

This is called Landscape Landscape. In this barren landscape, now or then, a no man's land of the mind bomb, cratered and holy with the wine of acceptance that cannot be drunk. Whose land is it anyway, this lost space of barbed wire crossings. I seek a bridge between the thens, the nows being hard to find to amorphous a cloud of unresolved gases that waft over this dug in space I have yet to relinquish. Though the push is on the forward trajectory the only way time's arrows fly, except for mine that lingers suspended in this barren earth churned place turn to make the poppies grow eventually. Is this a now that's a reminder, a then that won't begin to end? Or is it just the landscape of a mind that won't, that can't let go? Barbara Novak, Writer in Residence, Malloy University, Rockville Center, New York.

[Alison Stewart]

Did you want to add anything to that?

[Amanda Razon]

I have to shout out Barbara Novak because she's what we call a frequent flyer. She submits every year, multiple times a year. I think she submitted at least one poem for each theme this year. She definitely did appreciate you, Barbara, if you're listening, I really loved that poem. I think she's so. This is another thing I have to kind of bounce back. Mystery and history, or, sorry, I should say memoir and history kind of overlapped a lot. And I think this one was submitted under history, but it was kind of like almost a memoir. I think she's talking about holding on to her, you know, her history in the past. I love the line I have yet to relinquish, though the push is on the forward trajectory. Sorry. The only way time's arrow flies, except for mine. And it's kind of like that, not wanting to let go of the past, which I thought so many people could relate to. Which is another great thing about poetry is that I'm sure somebody heard that and was touched by that. I got the chills. Yeah, I really liked that poem.

[Alison Stewart]

We are marking the last day of National Poetry Month by recapping Morning Edition's poetry series, where they invited you to submit your own poems to potentially air their broadcast. We'd like to get you in on the conversation. What is your favorite poem and why? Who is your favorite poet? Why do you love poetry compared to any other medium? Our number is 2124-3396-9221-2433. WNYC. We'll have more of your poems after the break. This is all of it. You're listening to all of IT on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. I'm speaking with WNYC Morning Edition producers Amanda Razon and Veronica De Valliere. We're marking the last day of National Poetry Month by recapping Morning Edition's poetry series, where they invited you to submit your poetry to potentially air on their broadcast. Let's talk to Lisa, who is calling us from Newark, New Jersey. Hi, Lisa. Thank you so much for making the time to call all of It.

[Lisa]

Hi, thank you so much for taking my call. I really appreciate it.

[Alison Stewart]

Tell us about poetry and you.

[Lisa]

I've always been one of the folks in class. I was told I was very opinionated, but I just didn't know how to translate that into grammatically correct sentences and phrases. So my love with poetry has always been from afar. But I did want to take a moment to spotlight someone who is a actual professional poet from my native city of Newark that really pushed me back into my love of poetry. And her name is Jasmine Manns.

[Alison Stewart]

Tell us about Jasmine. What is it about her poetry that you like?

[Lisa]

Oh, my God, there's so many things. So I think the one that really stands out for me is the tonality. We know that poetry is something of a very sophisticated form of communication, and it's filled with beautiful words and comparisons, assimilies and metaphors. I think for me, Jasmine's poetry speaks to me so deeply because of its tonality, and it's written in a way in which I would speak like I would naturally speak in a conversational tone and flow. So that's just one of it, one of the layers. But the other part is it was a genre of poetry that I had never seen at that young age before. And for me to see her responding to pop culture phenomenons and online conversations, and one of her first earlier viral pieces was a response to Nicki Minaj and then her conversations about inner city and subverted feelings. And it was a conversation that I typically have with friends and I Felt like I was actually seeing it mirror back to me. So that way I know that the words that I say is beautiful. So it really invigorated me in a creative way.

[Alison Stewart]

Well put. Thank you for calling. We really appreciate you making the call today as you were working on this project. Veronica, what did you learn about poetry?

[Veronica Duvallier]

Well, I think we literally got a poetry lesson from a professional poet early on in our Inventors. We had the poet Kimiko Han on Morning Edition, and she kind of schooled Michael and myself about what makes a really compelling, successful poem. She talked to us a lot about specificity and how it's really, really important in poetry. The clearer and the more precise of an image you can create for your listeners, the more likely they are to connect with the poem. And maybe that was something I learned in grade school, but I'd kind of forgotten it until Kimiko was sitting in the studio telling us about it. And as she walked us through some of the poetry that we received, she helped kind of teach me that specificity can mean something vastly different to a lot of different people. It comes up in my mind if you're going to be specific in a poem, you want to talk about a really, really specific instance and paint the biggest picture of that instance as you can. But specificity can also just mean using precise language and using the exact right word in the exact right time. Or as the example Kamigo gave us was just use a title for your poem that's being specific, too. It's providing your readers or your listeners with a specific frame of mind. And I took that lesson to heart as we were through our inboxes here.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's go back to your list. We have a lot of sci fi fans here on all of its team and who listen to the show. And sci fi and fantasy was one of your categories. How did your listeners approach the sci fi theme with their poetry? Amanda?

[Amanda Razon]

I don't know. Do you want to take this? I feel like you really were into the sci fi.

[Veronica Duvallier]

Sure. I think sci fi was like the sleeper hit. Like, people really, really loved this theme. They jumped into it. We got so many poems from so many different walks of life, and I think it's partially because we provided them with dual themes. You could do sci fi or fantasy. You could do both if you felt like it. It's maybe genres for themes, but there are no genres here. And folks really kind of took it into one of two directions. We got, like, lots of poems about dragons for some reason, but, like, that kind of like fantastical game of Thrones specific like image on fantasy. And then we got kind of robots and flying cars and AI also falls into that bucket. But they really used both of those themes to use sci fi and fantasy as a reflection on the present, which is something that we, I think specifically asked them to do. We wanted them to take us to far fetched worlds as a way to look at the moment that we're all in. And they took that to heart, I think.

[Alison Stewart]

Let's listen to a sci fi fantasy poem now. This is Photosynthesis.

[Alaia Don Johnson]

This is Alaia Don Johnson from Flushing, Queens. And the poem is called Photosynthesis. We are the soup the scientists had the nerve to call primordial. We are the rustle of grackles in the trees of an evening in mourning for the sun. We are four billion evenings, a hundred trillion deaths. A single error in the sequence of deoxyribonucleic acids that make the code, that make the scaffold upon which we grow amoebas into albatrosses. And you, of course, who should not exist, but against all probability does. You are not a miracle. You are something better. You are here. Move what you will, though it might only be the wind as it curves past you, or the light refracted in eyes watery from brush fire. It came from the stars eons away and is for us the ever present.

[Alison Stewart]

Catalyst that makes you think of my mother.

[Michael Hill]

My mother was a biology teacher and we talked about photosynthesis a lot around the house. Like to your point, she's being really specific about something, but it means something different to me than it would be to someone else who's heard that poem.

[Amanda Razon]

And can I say something? I just noticed now it seems like the sci fi, the way that the poets read them, like more confidence and almost like very authoritative versus like the history. And the memoir ones were like slightly more positive, passive. And I don't mean that in a negative way, but it was just a little bit more like, you know, kind of like bird's eye view of whatever they're talking about. But the sci fi ones were very like very strong.

[Veronica Duvallier]

People got in it and they got really personal.

[Amanda Razon]

Yeah.

[Veronica Duvallier]

Which is weird for the most far fetched themes.

[Amanda Razon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hill]

We got a text that says Myth by Natasha Trethewey is also one of my favorites because it's a palindrome, a mirror poem. Also Movement song by Audre Lorde. We're gonna be able to get the last one in here. We're gonna talk about the theme of mystery. It's Mystery Week. What kind of mysteries did people want to get into?

[Amanda Razon]

Yeah, so this one was really fun. Like Veronica said earlier, people really kind of like stretch the boundaries of what a mystery is. There were a lot of like, people using mystery in like a kind of sarcastic way. This was the most like we were being let in on an inside joke. So there were some mysteries that I wasn't able to solve. I could read a Short 1 by 11 year old Amelia Wang. She says, I think it's a haiku. It's a cold bush flower planted near an unsolved case, never seen again. And I don't really know what she's talking about, but I think that's why I really liked it. And I think that's something that I took away from Poetry Month. You know, I don't need to come away with the answers from a poem. I can just let everything wash over me. And that was what I got from it.

[Michael Hill]

Let's listen to this example. This poem is called It's a Mystery to Me.

[Sandhya Nankhani]

It's a Mystery to Me. The mysteries of my childhood were questions I asked myself before falling asleep during long hot math classes after sweet swims in the sea. Why is the sky blue? How do flower buds open? Is Santa Claus real? Who is really truly my friend? Can you actually dig a hole to China? What is love? My hero Nancy Drew didn't give me all the answers, but she got me started, sent me on my way, made me a reader. And soon I knew if I wanted to uncover a secret, I could find it in a book. To solve a mystery about life, I could turn the pages of a book. Those who are afraid know this truth too. So they seek to hide the books, Burn the books, ban the books, snatch the books. How can they do this? It's a mystery to me. Do they not know? Did they forget that curiosity is the only thing that keeps us alive, makes us human, keeps the world moving? They may take away the books, but a child's questions never go away. And the words on the page find their way into other spaces and streams beyond the book, beyond the classroom, beyond a board of education. This is Sandhya Nankhani from Demarest, New Jersey.

[Alison Stewart]

Veronica, if someone wants to go and find the poems their fellow listeners submitted, where can they go?

[Veronica Duvallier]

WNYC.org Poetry Nice and easy.

[Alison Stewart]

Nice and easy. I've been speaking with WNYC Morning Edition producers Amanda Razon and Veronica. Excuse me. We have been celebrating National Poetry Month by recapping Morning Edition's poetry series. Thank you for sharing all of your poems. With us. We really appreciate it.

[Amanda Razon]

Thank you for having us.

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