← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
New Poems and Old Favorites For National Poetry Month
00:34:35
East Harlem-born Puerto Rican poet Willie Perdomo, the former State Poet of New York, is curating poets.org’s National Poetry Month series.
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- [00:00]
Alison Stewart
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Willie Perdomo
Listener Supported WNYC Studios.
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Alison Stewart
This is all of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in soho. Thanks for spending part of your day with us. I'm grateful you are here and I'm grateful that I will get to see many of you. Tonight at our get lit with all of it book Club event, we will be in conversation with author Adam Hazlett about his novel Mothers and Sons. Plus, we'll have a special live musical performance from Spencer Pepit of the Ophelias. It all starts at 6pm tonight at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library on 5th Avenue and 40th Street. There are a few tickets left, but grab them ASAP. To reserve yours, head to wnyc.org getlit Again, that is wnyc.org getlit that's coming up in just under six hours. Now let's get today's show started by kicking off Poetry Month throughout April. We're collaborating with the organization behind National Poetry Month, the American Academy of Poets. On the Academy's website, poets.org they publish a poem a day in April. Many of the poems published are new and each was written by a different contemporary poetry. We'll be featuring recorded readings of the National Poetry Month selections all month long on our show. The series this month is curated by Willie Perdomo. Willie is a former New York State Poet Laureate. He grew up in East Harlem and he got his start in the downtown poetry scene in the 1990s, like the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and the Gathering of the Tribes. Willie Perdomo is here now to discuss the series, perform some readings and to take your calls. Hi Willie.
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Willie Perdomo
Hello. How you doing?
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Alison Stewart
I am doing well. We're gonna start with a reading a poem selected today for April 2nd. It's by Mike Tyler. You can find it on poets.org Would you introduce the poem to us before reading it?
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Willie Perdomo
Sure. This poem is by Mike Tyler and Mike was part of that early revival. As you know, the Nu Rican Poets Cafe was founded in the mid-70s by Miguel Agarin, Miguel Pinero, Pedro Pietri, Sandra Maria Estevez and Jesus Papoleto Melendez. And then it had closed down and then it revived and Mike and myself, along with Poets like Dale Landersmith, Reg E. Gaines and Paul Beatty and were part of that revival. So it's a pleasure to be reading this poem. It's called Palazzo Tartaga. A boy asks me write a poem to a boy. A poem is a real thing, like a bike or goggles for swimming. I've been remembering Turtle slow what it's like to be interrupted by myself. Beauty, a hackney cab of commerce sits ahead proud into rickshaw mixing up cultures, geographies, biographies like AI hanging over us doesn't hang cut the gallows tumor. Death is a memory, something that happens to me before a volcano stares over the trees.
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Alison Stewart
That was Willie Perdomo reading Palazzo Tartaga. It's by Mike Tyler. What was your process for selecting poems for the National Poetry month series on Poets.org?
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Willie Perdomo
Well, I think in keeping with the academy's level of sort of capaciousness and democracy, I think that I wanted to make room at the table for as many poets as possible, most of whom are young, most of whom are emerging. But but I was even more intentional about soliciting poems from poets who had been in my workshops almost 15 for the last 15 to 20 years. And these are youth poets who are now adults who were in my Word to Everything I Love workshop at Urban Word NYC and my workshop at the VONA Workshops Writing Workshops Cave Canum Canto Mundo. So I was really intentional about revisiting some of these poets who had made some impact and really wanted them to have a chance to, to emerge and, and get some shine.
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Alison Stewart
Were there themes that you wanted to touch on with this poetry month?
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Willie Perdomo
Not really. I think, you know, you have poems that sort of celebrate cities like Detroit and Oakland, poems respectively, by Brittany Rogers and Barbara Jane Reyes. You have poems about fatherhood by Carlos Andres Go. You'll hear throughout the month. But really, I think it's about voices that appeal to my sense of truth and beauty, speaking to injustice, speaking about the understanding of memory, history. So it wasn't a theme that I was necessarily focused on as much as it was a wide array of voices.
- [06:08]
Alison Stewart
Listeners, are you a poetry fan who is a poet that you admire? Or maybe you have a favorite poem that you always like to revisit? We'd love to hear about it. Call 2124-3396-9221-2433-WNYC. You can call us or you can text us that poem. What poem do you especially like to lean on during uncertain times? Or maybe the spring weather recalls a certain poem that gives you hope. Give us a call. 212-433-WNYC-2124. You can call or text us, or you can write to us on social media. Llnyc. My guest is Willie Perdomo, a former New York State Poet Laureate. He's here to discuss the series he's curated for poets dot org. You mentioned that all the poems, the poets on this April series, they're contemporary, they have written new work. Why was it important to have new work or new voices represented?
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Willie Perdomo
I think because poetry is sort of ever expanding, and it gives you a sense of the range of the voice of America, really, the voice that we inhabit in terms of how we go about accessing our souls. I think any poet who has an unpublished poem and gets a chance to publish that poem, it's a very exciting time for poets. And most of the poets that I, I chose are sort of young or emerging and coming into their own. They just published their first book, and this is a great opportunity to highlight a variety of voices that are sort of throughout the country.
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Alison Stewart
So, Willie, when did you first become aware of or interested in poetry?
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Willie Perdomo
Oh, that's a. That's. That's a whole nother conversation, I think. But I think. I think my mother was a documentarian, and she kept journals. And I think the act of writing and the. She really wanted to. It was a matter of saying, I am alive in this world, and I am documenting what I see, and I am seeing my son grow and I am seeing my grandson grow. And I need to put this down to make sure that it was real. I think that would be the first impetus for me to become a writer. And then after that, it becomes the collective act of telling a story on a stoop in East Harlem, where I grew up, and how that sort of story sort of mutated and then contracted. And then it sort of traveled down the block and down to the candy store. And then I saw a poet named Ed Randolph. I attended Friends Seminary in Manhattan. And he read these poems out loud during an assembly period, one that was dedicated to me. And. And I just sort of got really emotional. And next thing I knew, I was asking him, like, I want to be. I want you to be my mentor. I didn't ask him directly, but I came up to him and says, I think I want to write poems because poems gave me. It gave me an access. It gave me a language that I did not have to sort of parse out chaos, confusion and conflict. So there's so many stories that I can relay about the makings of the young poet Willie Perdomo.
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Alison Stewart
Yeah. I was gonna ask, you know, poetry can be a vulnerable medium to write in. Was that ever an issue for you, or maybe that was the relief for you?
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Willie Perdomo
I think it was more the relief. I think because I had support from my homies in the neighborhood, from my family, I didn't feel as vulnerable. And then once I went downtown, you know, I encountered a bunch of young poets who were all doing the same thing. In many ways, Alison, you were part of that generation. You know, like, your correspondence was really important and the news that you were bringing our way. And, you know, there was exciting music like A Tribe Called Quest, and all this experimentation going on with poetry and abstraction and jazz and hip hop. So it was a really exciting time to be a poet and claim oneself.
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Alison Stewart
To be a poet that it was. Let's talk to dawn from Park Sloe. Hi, Don. Thanks for calling, all of it. You are on the air. Hi, Moni.
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Don
Hi. Yes, the reason I'm calling is because I have a hard time understanding poetry. And I've heard a lot of poets on your show and on other shows, and I've studied poetry, but still, it'd be great for me to maybe get a little more insight to what the poem means. When a guest reads a poem, go inside the poem a little bit so I can sort of understand. I mean, I don't know why I don't. You know, I guess I'm too literal. Maybe I'm looking too closely to defining what each word means or however.
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Carrie
Do you have any advice, Don, that's.
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Don
A really understanding poetry?
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Willie Perdomo
Yeah.
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Alison Stewart
This is a great question for you, Willie.
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Willie Perdomo
As your teacher, I teach, and I think when most people hear the word poetry, they're looking for the exit sign, basically. Right. And part of that is because we're so caught up in what a poem means, and I think it might have been T.S. eliot, he says, is that meaning is what you throw at the guard dog while you go inside and rob the house. Right. So basically, that meaning is a distraction. You really want to be in a situation where, if you encounter a poem, all you need to do is hang on to one line, and from that line, it will sort of expand. Where is it that you are entering the poem? Where is it? Are you embracing that feeling of ambiguity, confusion, which is a valid entry point for anyone who is experiencing a poem for the first time or reading it over. But I would recommend just hang on to one line, like, say To Be in Love by Gwendolyn Brooks. I always hang on to that line where she says, to be in love is to be the beautiful half of a golden hurt. Right. And that's the line that I hang on to and say, what do I associate with that particular line? So that would be my suggestion. Like, get away from the meaning and then move toward the feeling.
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Alison Stewart
Let's talk to Carrie, who's calling in from Greenwich Village. Hi, Kerry. Thanks so much for making time to talk to us on all of it. I hear you want to read a poem.
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Don
Oh, thank you very much. I wanted to read a couple of stanzas from Sylvia Townsend Warner's poem, which is called John Crask's Country. John Krask was a sailor who had a head injury and became a folk artist. He did needlework. This is when folk artistry was not yet known in the 40s. And it's a short poem which deals with each stanza. It deals with love, building, eating and grieving. So a whole life.
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Alison Stewart
All right, let's hear it.
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Don
It starts very. It's very plain speech. It starts out, you cannot love here as you can love inland, where love grows easy as a pig or a South Wall fruit. I don't think pigs appear much in poetry, but it's. It's. It's a beautiful image, isn't it? And then there's a lot of repetition because you cannot eat here as you can eat inland. A man can't do with less than six herring for breakfast and something stronger than tea if he is to hold fast against a wind blowing from the North Pole and only salt water between. And you cannot grieve here as you can grieve inland where the dead lie sweetly labeled like gems in the grocery store. You must blink at the sea till your face is scarlet and your eyes sore with the wind blowing from the North Pole and only salt water between. That's how it ends.
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Alison Stewart
Thank you so much for calling, Carrie. Hey, Willie, we've got somebody who wants to talk a little bit about another poet that he likes. It's your son, Neruda, who's online, too. Hi, Neruda.
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Neruda
Hey, what's going on, Del? Dad, I just wanted to call in. You talked about finding a meaning for a poem. But for me, every time I listen to your poem, that's my heart right there. It really speaks to me. So I wanted to read it to you while you're on air. I hope you don't mind.
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Willie Perdomo
Oh, I don't mind at all, kid. You know, Alison, when Neruda was a kid, he came back home one day and told me, Dad, I Write the poems that bite back. And that's been my aesthetic ever since. So go ahead, kid.
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Neruda
All right. We used to say, that's my heart right there. As if to say, don't mess with her right there. As if. Don't even play. That's a part of me right there. In other words. Okay, okay. That's the start of me right there. As if, come that day, that's the end of me right there. As if push come to shove, I would fend for her right there as if, come what may, I would lie for her right there as if come, love to pay I would die for that right there.
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Willie Perdomo
Hey. Bravo. Bravo.
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Alison Stewart
Neruda. What do you like about that poem?
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Neruda
I don't know. My dad and, you know, my mom, all my family, they mean a lot to me. So for that poem, it just speaks to what I would do for my family. I would do anything. I love my family to death. And I love my dad to death, too.
- [15:37]
Alison Stewart
So thank you for calling in. We really appreciate that. My guest is Willie Perdomo. He's a former New York State Poet Laureate. He's here to discuss a series he's curated on Poets.org. we want to hear your favorite poem, a poem that means something to you. 212-433-WNYC 212-433-9692. Did you know he was going to call in Willie?
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Willie Perdomo
No, I did not. I think, you know, I think he checked to see if he was on the right station, but I didn't know that he was gonna call in. And, you know, we named him Neruda for a reason, so.
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Alison Stewart
Pablo Nerodo.
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Willie Perdomo
Yes, right.
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Alison Stewart
Love that. You're gonna read another poem for A Spring Night by Sarah Teasdale.
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Willie Perdomo
Yeah. Yeah. This is. A poem is in the. In the public domain. And, you know, this wasn't necessarily part of my curation, but it's called Spring Night by Sarah Teasdale. The park is filled with night and fog the veils are drawn about the world the drowsy lights along the paths Are dim and pearled gold and gleaming the empty streets golden gleaming the misty lake the mirrored lights light Sunken swords glimmer and shake oh, is it not enough to be here with this beauty over me? My throat should ache with praise and I should kneel in joy beneath the sky oh, beauty, are you not enough? Why am I crying after love with youth a singing voice and eyes to take earth's wonder with surprise? Why have I put off my pride? Why am I unsatisfied? I for whom the Pensive night binds her cloudy hair with light. I, for whom all beauty burns like incense in a million urns. Oh, beauty, are you not enough? Why am I crying after love? Wow, those two last questions are tough. Those are tough.
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Alison Stewart
Those are tough. Let's talk to Susan from the East Village. Hi, Susan. Thanks for calling, all of it.
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Carrie
Oh, hi. Thank you. Thank you. I had wanted to talk about a poem that I read when I was pretty young. And even though it was so simple, it stayed with me for years because I think of its exuberance. Are you familiar with Child on Top of a Greenhouse by Theodore Rechke?
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Willie Perdomo
I'm familiar with Rechke. My Papa's last waltz is my papa's Waltz. I think if I remember. But it's a beautiful poem about a young boy dancing with his father.
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Alison Stewart
What's the poem you're gonna read?
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Carrie
Yeah, I know that. Pardon me?
- [18:38]
Alison Stewart
I understand you were gonna read a different poem, though.
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Carrie
Oh, oh, yes, yes. But it's interesting because they both have to do with a childhood memory. Ye Papa's Waltz. One is more famous, but this one really struck me. It's Child on Top of a Greenhouse. Do you want me to read it?
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Alison Stewart
Sure, go for it.
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Carrie
The wind billowing out the seat of my britches, my feet crackling. Splinters of glass and dried putty. The half grown chrysanthemums staring up like accusers up through the streets. Glass flashing with sunlight. A few white clouds all rushing eastward. A line of elms plunging and tossing like horses. And everyone pointing up and shouting. So, yeah, he was in a dangerous place, I guess, on top of the greenhouse. And all the adults realized he was there. But that moment of being on top of this glass mountain and all the images that, you know that. That are affecting his senses and kind of the exuberance, you know, and maybe in only sort of realizing the danger, but how exhilarating it all was.
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Alison Stewart
Excellent poem. Thank you so much for calling in. Yeah, well, it was interesting to hear her describe the poem because she described all the senses that you use when you read.
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Willie Perdomo
Yeah, I think that's our first entry point again, I think, you know, outside the feeling is that the sensory. The aspect to any poem which is really where verse begins with what you see, what you smell, what you hear, you know, One of the reasons I love walking in New York City, because it's just one big sensory explosion. And most of those images are like springboards into a larger definition of what is love, what is fatherhood, what is beauty, what it means to witness and the image cannot be discounted from a poem, even though there is room for abstraction and statement.
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Alison Stewart
It is Poetry Month. April is Poetry Month. Do you have a favorite poet? Do you have a favorite poem that you want to read to us? Our number is 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. We'll have more with Willie Prudomo and more of your calls after the break. This is all of it. You are listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Willie Perdomo, a former New York State Poet Laureate. He's here to discuss a series he's curated on Poets.org that will feature one new poem a day, each written by a different contemporary poet. We'll be airing some of those poems in the show throughout April, which is National Poetry Month. We are also taking your calls. But, Willie, I wanted to ask you about a class you teach, Beats Rhythm and Narrative class. It talks about storytelling and hip hop. And since you came to Asian New York during the golden age of hip hop, how do you think hip hop has influenced poetry?
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Willie Perdomo
Oh, exponentially. There's the idea of improvisation, rhyme structure, storytelling. You know, I came of age with some of the greatest storytellers of hip hop, namely Slick Rick was. Was one of them. And of course, I'm aging myself when I say that. But I think what excited me most about hip hop was the level of creativity and what we used to call the cipher, which is to say that you would walk down to the corner or in front of the candy store and see a circle of kids who were just versifying off the top, as we used to say. And some of these rhymes were intricate. They had meter, they had fantasy, and some of them had great, great lies. Right? And so hip hop for me was an overall structure as, as is jazz, as is Saisa music. For me, that informs the way I approach language and rhythm and the idea of language having a sonic. But hip hop was just major for all of us who were coming up in the 90s and starting to write poetry.
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Alison Stewart
Let's talk to Tila in Paramus. Hi, Tila, thank you so much for calling, all of it. You are on the air.
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Tila
Hi. Can you hear me?
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Alison Stewart
I hear you. Great.
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Tila
Hello? Okay, great. So I'm calling about a poem. When I was actually in school, in elementary school, long, long time ago, we had to memorize lots and lots of poems. And I still remember mostly all of them, at least the first five or six lines. But this one I happened to fall in love with in college. And it was by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. And I love it because as a little girl I used to go to a penny candy store and with my nickel I got to pick out my candy. And the rhythm and the mood of this poem, I think is terrific. Do you want me to read it?
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Alison Stewart
Sure. Go for it.
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Tila
Okay. The penny candy store beyond the el is where I first fell in love with unreality. Jelly beans glowed in the semi gloom of that September afternoon. A cat upon the counter moved among the licorice sticks and Tootsie Rolls and oh boy gum. Outside the leaves were falling as they died the wind had blown away the sun. A girl ran in, her hair was rainy, her breasts were breathless. In the little room outside the leaves were falling and they cried too soon, too soon.
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Alison Stewart
Thank you so much for calling in. Let's talk to Eli. Hi, Eli, calling in from Brooklyn. How are you?
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Eli
I'm good. How are you doing?
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Alison Stewart
Well. What are you going to tell us about what poem?
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Eli
So I wanted to read a poem by my mom, Judy Katz, who published a book of poems called How News Travels a couple of years ago. Her first book. And I'd love to read it to you.
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Alison Stewart
Go for it.
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Eli
How News Travels. I used to imagine it like birds flying or a crisp white envelope. Until now, I never conceived of it nestled inside me, moving, how I move. I step out of the house, forgetting I am wearing my mother's robe. It is before dawn. Nothing stirs, no jogger or paperboy, not even the birds keeping track of things. Am I wearing slippers? I must be. I move at a steady clip past the quiet houses on their unlit lawns. I am taller than usual, held up, afraid of sudden movement, the swing of my arms. I walk as if my whole body were filled with eggs and my task to deliver them unbroken. And when I reach my brother's house, there through the window, he is making his way to the front door to open it to the news of our mother's death that I alone have carried in the street and can finally set down.
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Alison Stewart
Thank you for calling in.
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Eli
Thank you.
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Alison Stewart
We got this great text. It says. That was beautiful. Your guest son calling in to read his dad's poem. You can tell how much he loves him. That got me smiling. Thank you. In high school, made it to the New Year weekend to take in some readings with friends. Felt like we had stumbled onto the real deal. Definitely left its mark on us. Your guest is great. His expressive feel for words is absolutely on point with that lead into I'd like to hear you read one of your poems.
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Willie Perdomo
So I'm gonna read a poem called they Won't Find Us in Books, which is from a book that I wrote called the Crazy Bunch, published in 2019. And just to give you a little context, the book is a fictional chronicle of the lives of five young black and Puerto Rican men from East Harle Harlem at the dawn of the hip hop era in the 90s. And it takes place over the course of a weekend. And by the time we get to this particular poem, the five has have been reduced to three because of tragedy. So this is called they Won't Find Us in Books. And after we officially gained entry into the brotherhood of Bad Mother Flowers, what could our mothers do but lose sleep, wake into prayer, prepare herbs and apples, cursive the names of our enemies on loose leaf and let their names dust in the sunlight. Now everything is clean, rezoned and paved, tenements abandoned like whack parties. What is left for us to do but summon bullies from their graves and liberate ourselves from influence? Gone are the old spots near the takeout old flames where we used to make out, the spots where the light used to fade out. And the letters we wrote from burning buildings. Our shoulders were made of stone, Our evil was translucent. Turn us into mortals so we can cry without judgment. Surrender our cool and watch us morph into men. Let it be known that we chased killer dealers before the cans got kicked for good. We were made from repeating blocks. Holler if you hear us. There was never a once upon a time because all it takes is one person to get away with it. To get away and get over, to get some and get up. Here we go. Come on. Here we go. You our history, you said. If being free means burning a few things, then play that number for us straight. The corner was between us and the world. And sometimes you just needed to be okay with not telling. If anyone asks about your destiny, don't explain. Maybe this is a story. We need to turn ourselves into music. Bass and bully a string pulling at both ends. They won't find us. In books you used to say, Everybody say yeah. And you don't stop. We practice our lives in lobbies and layaway ganders and goofs boosting lines from the radio, breaking dynamite sty. We were God bodies. We had God in our bodies. That's what Brother Lowe used to say. He used to say, a man can stand on the corner long enough to see a dream etched on a herb's forehead. To see desperation Exit from a subway station to see a traffic. A tragic hero come back to reclaim his city. So we downloaded his bars and gems, and no doubt, when it was time to tell our story, out would come fire and spit.
- [30:24]
Alison Stewart
That was Willie Perdomo reading from they won't find us in books. When you are teaching poetry, what's important? What's an important lesson to keep in mind for a young poet or someone who's not a poet yet? Somebody just wants to write poetry about how to take that first step.
- [30:45]
Willie Perdomo
Voice. It. For me, it always starts with voice. And who is it on the other side of that poem? So, for instance, the poem that you just heard was definitely written to someone that I had probably grown up with in East Hong. And I'm addressing that person directly. So that means that it. It dictates my. My. My syntax, my rhythm, my imagery, my sense of wordplay, my symbolism. So when I work with young poets, specifically in creative writing workshops, it always begins with the questions that they might have about how to define things like truth, truth and beauty, but also to understand that there's always one person out there that is listening. And that person might be your cousin. It might be your son. It might be a radio host. It might be, you know, Ms. Mary who's sitting on the stoop. And in many ways, it determines how you approach relaying that poem. So, you know, it's. It's. The thing you want to really get to an emerging young poet is to get away from trying to sound like a poet and move more toward the idea of authenticity, what that means in. In your world. So I always encourage my students to use the. The. I don't want to say slang, but that's the word. Like the. The way words are put together only because that language is so. And constantly in transformation. So for me, it always starts with voice.
- [32:36]
Alison Stewart
I think we only have one more slot of someone who called in that could get on the air. Thanks to everybody who called. We're gonna go for Janet from Rockland County. Hi, Janet. Thank you for calling.
- [32:49]
Carrie
Hi, how are you? Can you hear me?
- [32:52]
Alison Stewart
I got you. Yeah. Let's go.
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Carrie
Okay, great. I love Mary Oliver is just wonderful. And this is a poem called Mornings at Blackwater. For years, every morning, I drank from Blackwater Pond. It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt, the feet of ducks. And always it assuaged me from the dry bowl of the far past. What I want to say is that the past is the past, and the present is what your life is, and you are capable of choosing what that will be. Darling citizen, so come to the pond or the river of your imagination or the harbor of your longing and put your lips to the world and live your life.
- [33:37]
Alison Stewart
Thank you for. Thank you so much. We're living in an uncertain present. Willie, why is poetry useful at a time of uncertainty?
- [33:47]
Willie Perdomo
Well, I think, you know, in keeping with the Poem A Day series from the Academy of American Poets, they really subscribe to what William Collins. William. William Collins, Williams said about poetry, that it's difficult to get the news from poems, yet most people die miserably every day for lack of what is found there. So that, in other words, if you are really in tune and present to your life, there has to be a sense of poetry that informs that life. And all these poems going out day by day are just little sort of pieces of life and democracy and witness and celebration and joy. And all those things need to be part of our national fabric if we are going to prosper. I think.
- [34:37]
Alison Stewart
My guest was Willie Perdomo, former New York State Poet Laureate. He has curated a series on Poets.org, which will feature one new poem a day every day during April. It's National Poetry Month. Thanks to all of our callers who called in. I think we'll do this again. We'll have another poetry slam on the air. Willie, it was so nice to meet you.
- [34:57]
Willie Perdomo
Thank you. Thank you very much. And it was a pleasure to talk with you. Alison. A role that feels like paradise and.
- [35:06]
Alison Stewart
Always at a heavenly prize. Angel soft angel soft soft and strong so it's simple Pick up a pack.
- [35:15]
Willie Perdomo
Today angel soft, soft and strong so cool.
- [35:19]
Alison Stewart
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