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- [00:01]
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- [00:56]
Kevin Young
To credit approval Hi, you're listening to the New Yorker Poetry Podcast. I'm Kevin Young, poetry editor of the New Yorker Magazine. On this program, we invite a poet to select a poem from the New Yorker Archive to read and discuss. Then they read a poem of their own that's been published in the magazine. My guest today is Ada Limon, 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 Poetry in the Natural World. Welcome Ada, thanks for joining.
- [01:36]
Ada Limon
Thank you so much for having me. It's so great to be with you.
- [01:40]
Kevin Young
It's good to be with you, as always. And the first poem you've chosen to read today is yous Belong to the World by Carrie Fountain, which I know appears in the anthology you edited. You are here. What drew you to this poem in particular?
- [01:54]
Ada Limon
This poem in particular by Carrie Fountain. It really speaks to the idea of allowing yourself to give yourself permission to be. And I feel like every time we're moving through the world quick at a super fast pace, we have the lists, all of these things on the to do list. And I feel like Carrie Fountain is a wonderful poet of returning to a reason for being. And this poem in particular feels like a reason to allow yourself and give yourself permission to be on this planet, which I feel like sometimes is difficult in some ways. I feel like it's a spell. It's a spell to ground yourself, center yourself on the earth.
- [02:46]
Kevin Young
Let's listen to the poem. This is Ada Limon reading you Belong to the World by Carrie Fountain.
- [02:53]
Ada Limon
You belong to the world, as do your children, as does your husband. It's strange even now to understand that you are a mother and a wife, that these gifts were given to you and that you received them, fond as you've always been of declining invitations. You belong to the world. The hands that put a peach tree into the earth, exactly where the last one died in the freeze, belong to the world and will someday feed it again differently. Your body will become food again for something, just as it did so humorously, as you became a mother. Hungry beings clamoring at your breast, born as they'd been, with the bodily passion for survival that is our kind's one common feature. You belong to the world, animal. Deal with it. Even as the great abstractions come to take you away, the regrets, the distractions. You can at any second come back to the world to which you belong, the world you never left, won't ever leave. Cells forever. Forever going through their changes as they have been since you were. Less than anything. Simple information born inside your own mother's newborn body itself, made from the stuff of your grandmother, carried within hers. When at 12, she packed her belongings and left the Scottish island, she'd known all she'd ever known on a shipbound for Ellis island, carrying within her your mother, you, the great human future that dwells now inside the bodies of your children, the young who, like you, belong to the world.
- [05:13]
Kevin Young
That was yous Belong to the World, by Carrie Fountain, which was published in the February 12th and 19th, 2024 issue of the New Yorker. Where to start with that poem which, as you were reading it, it felt more and more epic as we went along, I think, you know, we have birth and death, of course, but we also have rebirth, it feels like, and the story of Immigran, a story of ancestry. But I want to maybe start with some of the language, some of the sounds. I was really struck hearing you read it at all those Bs in the sort of first third of the poem. Hungry beings clamoring at your breast, born as they bend with the bodily passion. And then it turns into Cs. Are kinds one common or K sounds. And then this part, which it's a refrain, really. And you called it a spell, which I love that. But the incantation of the spell is, you belong to the world, comma, animal. Deal with it. You know this. Deal with it. How do you think that shift in language works? The shift between, let's call it the song like incantation, and then the kind of repetition of, you belong to the world. Animal. Deal with it.
- [06:24]
Ada Limon
Yeah. I mean, I feel like one of the things that I really love about Carrie Fountain's work is that she has a way of always arresting the poem within the poem. So there's a moment where there's momentum building, momentum building, and then she breaks it. And I feel like that's the moment it breaks. And there's a level in which she's telling the mind, Right, to get back into the body. And it's with that word animal, and that you can always return to the world. And again, I think it's a poem that's speaking specifically to the self. So she's saying, you know, this is, you belong to the world. Stop trying to not belong to it. Stop trying to find ways in which you are other, in which you are unseen, in which you are untethered, in which you are mortally wounded. That we, you know, in so many ways that we are. And so she's trying to bring us back, or her back, really, and in doing so, us, the reader, back to the animal self, to the breathing being that belongs in the air and of this world and of this planet. And I think that that switch from, you know, the incantation to the command is such a great turn. And if this was a sonnet, right, that would be the turn. And then I love what follows, even as the great abstractions, because then we go to the brain, then we go to. Oh, what are the abstractions we think about? Death, beauty, mortality, depression, anxiety. I mean, all of these things that we can't hold onto. And yet we. We deeply and despairingly know in our bodies. And I feel like that moment is again taking us out of the mind and saying, you can at any second come back to the world to which you belong.
- [08:35]
Kevin Young
The world you never left, will never leave. I mean, you can't leave it.
- [08:38]
Ada Limon
Yeah, yeah. That's the other part. Like, even if you try, you can't leave it. You know, we're one and the same.
- [08:47]
Kevin Young
I love that idea and how you describe it coming about with the sort of turn. I almost feel like there's another turn toward the end, as they have been since you were less than break anything. And I think the breaks are incredibly strong in this poem. Any simple information born inside break. Your own mother's newborn body itself made break from the stuff your grandmother carried within hers. And then we have a story pretty late in the poem at the end of this. Instead of this, let's call it the kind of primal, shared, but also not shared. There's a way in which there's a specificity. And I love how you help us understand the difference between you as a reader and you as a stand in for the self that is speaking in a way or being spoken to. It's almost a self talking to itself. But then it becomes this story. And really a story of matrilineage, of how these things carry on forever, gets named, said twice in one line. I couldn't get away with that. And I love how the poem manages to do that for us.
- [09:58]
Ada Limon
Yeah.
- [09:59]
Kevin Young
How do you take that story at the end?
- [10:01]
Ada Limon
Yeah, I completely agree with everything you said. And I think that when we move into the Ellis island story, that's when we really are focusing on bloodline. And that in our own suffering and in our own day to day problems and our own day to day joys, there is the active bloodline of how we got here, regardless of. Of the many different ways all human beings have become who they are in this moment. And I love that sort of turn because that feels like, like you called it the second turn. I think you're completely correct that that's the moment where it's not just honoring, okay, who are you and what have you done and you know, who has come of you, but also where have you come from? And even though again, it's coming from the grandmother and then the mother and then the speaker, there's a level in which all of that is coming from the planet itself, that it is the stuff of the world. So it's bloodlines, but it's also a way of experiencing a connectedness with all cellular life.
- [11:21]
Kevin Young
Well, I wonder about that in terms of the world versus the earth versus the planet. You said the planet is the world somehow in this poem. But maybe this is a bigger philosophical question. Is the world different than the earth? And you're thinking about this a lot in a book called you'd are Here, which we're going to talk about more later. But I wonder in this poem how the you understands it. You belong to the world. The hands have put a peach tree into the earth. I mean, which is where I just go, all right, I'm going to go wherever you want. Because this peach tree, exactly where the last one died in the frieze belong break to the world and will someday feed it again differently and you know, to get away with differently and humorously. And these other little sort of phrases that we use but we don't always use in poems, I think is really powerful too, as an aside. But what about that peach tree and this sort of earth versus world Are they the same thing in this poem?
- [12:20]
Ada Limon
You know, I think that they are. I think that the reason why it switches from the earth and the early part to the world at the end is that it becomes. It's more earthbound and planet bound. And then I think world includes the universe. I think world gets even larger. And I think you said the poem feels like it's just. It's getting bigger and bigger as you go. And I think that it has to end with world in a way that feels like, okay, the spell is then complete because, yes, the earth, yes, the planet, but the chorus of world has to be the end of it because it's larger.
- [13:05]
Kevin Young
Yeah, I love that. I think also, again, that's where I start to see the rebirth. And it's almost stubbornness, or is it hopefulness that puts a peach tree into the earth exactly where the last one died. And I think that same call it fortitude is what puts this grandmother into the poem in motion. And the poem ends for me in motion in a way that the beginning feels more static. And that's not a. Neither one is better or worse. But it is a difference, you know, it is sort of starts with rootedness and ends with uprootedness.
- [13:47]
Ada Limon
Yeah. I think that's such a good way. Such a good way to put it. I think that there's not only the sort of, okay, here I am. You know, I think of it almost in the beginning. If you've ever heard a therapist, if someone's going through trauma, they'll say, okay, look around the room. Name the things in the room. What are some colors you see? And I feel like there's a self soothing element at the beginning. You know, you belong to the world, as do your children, as does your husband. Right. Like, it's just this kind of like, you know, it's okay. It's okay. There's a sort of a soothing, calming factor. And then the strength builds so that the poem can unravel into these larger, you know, maybe perhaps more conceptual ways of thinking.
- [14:37]
Kevin Young
Yeah. Well, and I love how the husband, as you almost imply, it's a thing in the room.
- [14:42]
Ada Limon
Yeah.
- [14:43]
Kevin Young
That you have to name. And then let's go past it. He can survive. But I love this kind of, as it says, a bodily passion for survival in the poem. I think the form is part of that. And the kind of one stanza poem that courses through. There's something about that that is a kind of solid body matter. And sometimes you write in that form. I know some of the poems we've Run the end of poetry. And I think the poem we're talking about in a minute, too is just. How do you think that works in terms of sort of one stanza? Why that?
- [15:22]
Ada Limon
Yeah, I'm a big fan of. Well, as you know, because, you know, my work is that I like all sorts of ways of formally differentiating my poems. But I do love a stickic, I guess, if you want to call it that, the one stanza poem. And I think it's primarily because I feel there's a similarity to that and the prose poem in which all of these things are joined by the mind and that there is no space between them, they're piled on one another because that is the stickiness of the thought. And if you were to put them in stanzas, there'd be a little breath, a little break, a little space around it, a little calm pocket of air, which is so wonderful.
- [16:16]
Kevin Young
Sure.
- [16:17]
Ada Limon
But I think sometimes in the poem like this, there is a build, there is a continuation. And it's partly the brain synapses moving as fast as they can and the poem trying to keep up with it. And so I think that when you work in this form, a lot of what you're trying to do is honor the original draft, even if you've written 25, the original rhythm and the original following of the brain that you had to do in order to get into its final formation. But it's one of my favorite ways to write. It's also one of my favorite things to read, only because it feels like the mind at work. It feels like how we think.
- [16:58]
Kevin Young
I think maybe the way I would think of it too, is this the difference between leaps, which I like, I think, and linkages, you know, these things aren't opposite. And in fact, I think the best writers help us understand that they're very related. And it's almost angles of the same thing.
- [17:20]
Ada Limon
Yes.
- [17:21]
Kevin Young
Size of the same coin. Or maybe it's approaches. But for me, I can see in this poem the way those linkages work. And I often have, just as an aside, the opposite happen where it'll start, maybe like that, and it won't feel right until I put it in stanzas. And suddenly it's a poem. And suddenly things that I've been wrestling with poems lately, that I'm changing back and forth between different stanza forms. And it has the totally different feeling. Think here. What works so well is the enjambment, which feels like kinds of internal line breaks here. Invitations, period. You belong to the world, the hands, you know, and what I see there And I always think of line, the line as the atomic level of the poem. And, you know, you see these kind of three atoms set in motion next to each other, and they're all, if not equal, then linked in the way we're talking invitations, the world, the hands. These are three things that she's linking for us.
- [18:27]
Ada Limon
Yeah, I love that because as you were talking and I was thinking about your beautiful poems, I was thinking about how when we work in stanzas and we work in sajura, there's a way in which the air becomes the connective tissue, and it has to be connected by space. Like, there has to be a moment in which you trust the reader enough and you trust yourself enough to trust the air will hold you to the next stanza. And then with this poem, and poems that are often in this form, it is. The connective tissue is part of the music. And so the enjambments have to work especially hard. Right. Because you're not getting that space. The line breaks are. They have to work a little tougher too, because you don't have the benefit of that suspension given by the sejura or the stanza break. But, yeah, I think the connective tissue here, it's almost showing your work. Like, this is how I thought of this, and this is how I got there. And in some ways, she's guiding you. Like, come with me. See how my brain is working. See how this unfolds. And maybe it will release a similar kind of connection in your mind.
- [19:50]
Kevin Young
I love that. You know, I'm a sucker for poems. I don't often have them. The title is the first line. You know what I mean? It goes into the poem itself. What does that do? You think? In this case? But also, I think in the repetition of you belong to the world, which we've talked about a little, but how does. You're kind of almost giving away the goods. You're like, by the way, in case you were wondering, you belong to the world. I'd have hid it a little bit or made it sort of more mysterious. Instead, it's like, I'm gonna tell you and then I'm gonna tell you again. And I'm gonna tell you again.
- [20:23]
Ada Limon
Yeah, I love that you bring that up because I, again, go back to the thought for me is that as the speaker is experiencing this poem and as this poem is coming into the world, it feels like again, that self soothing, like, okay, where does it begin? It's a phrase. I think this phrase came. This feels like this phrase was born into this person's mind, right into Carrie Fountain's mind. You belong to the world. And that's how the poem started. As do your children, as to your husband. It's the thing you tell yourself when you feel like you don't. And I think it had to begin there because that's where Carrie could find a safe enough space on the page and a calm enough space on the page to then talk about lineage, to talk about bloodline, and then to talk about, you know, there's fear in here, too. And so I think that's part of it. It's creating a framework that is safe.
- [21:27]
Kevin Young
Well said. Now, in our November 13, 2023 issue, the new Yorker published your poem Hell or High Water, which we'll hear you read in a moment. Is there anything you want to say first, before we hear it? Anything listeners might need to know?
- [21:42]
Ada Limon
I wrote it at the Community of Writers up near Lake Tahoe, and as I was doing that drive up from my hometown of Sonoma, California, to Lake Tahoe, I was reminded of all the different times we had done that drive. And lines of this poem came to me. And it wasn't until, of course, I sat down maybe four or five days later that the poem came out in a full form. And then I edited it quite a bit to get it to this final version.
- [22:18]
Kevin Young
Well, let's hear it. Here's Ada Limon reading her poem Hell or High Water.
- [22:25]
Ada Limon
Hell or High Water. Not church goers or joiners. Still my people sang up Highway 12 or Arnold Drive, depending on the traffic. Blue moon, you saw me standing alone, my maternal grandfather would croon in a big put on cowboy voice like Marty Robbins as we barreled up the 79 from Julian to Calamasa after all their money disappeared in a saving and loan scam and they lost everything they thought was safe come Hell or high water. On the other side El otro Lado my grandfather would sing Liria Mendoza Rancheros and Mal Hombre songs about La Frontera on our way from Oceanside to Laguna beach, also here in the mountains. I remember driving up from Glenellyn, the drive interminable, my brother's pugilist tendencies bruising me on the back seats, sticky vinyl. Even then we could be swayed to sing at the campsite. My father would pull out his guitar and we'd beg him for a Cat came back or 500 miles, something with a chorus we could sing along to. Sometimes we'd even like the sad song drifting to black between the flames of the fire and the aspen and the pines all flickering in the distance. What was the difference between a song sung on the journey and a song sung once you got there? One was about passing the time, the other about bellowing your presence to the rocks and stones. I don't know. I know that we sang. And here in this valley. I can't help but think of how my father pulled out his guitar at my stepmother's deathbed, which was just their bed, really, at home up north. And on a cold, clear day he sang 500 miles and she was already almost gone, and I wept and his voice sounded so strong. So when the hospice nurse came and said, you have no religion, right? I didn't know how to answer. Because we did. It was this. It was all those years tied together on the road, singing at the top of our lungs, harmonious and inharmonious both and with gusto. Our voices meshed together like tree roots. Not for any good reason other than the sheer pleasure of it. Something to pass the time, like beauty, like going to the mountaintop just to go. It's the old way. It's the only way I know. A mountain, an echo, a coming back and coming back, A chorus.
- [25:40]
Kevin Young
That was hell or high water. By Ada Limone.
- [25:45]
Sponsor Announcer
Hi, I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor of the New Yorker. Each week on the Writer's Voice podcast, New York fiction writers read their newly published stories from the magazine. You can hear from authors like Colson Whitehead.
- [25:57]
Ada Limon
Turner nudged Elwood, who had a look.
- [25:59]
Kevin Young
Of horror on his face. They saw it. Griff wasn't going down. He was going to go for it.
- [26:07]
Ada Limon
No matter what happened after.
- [26:10]
Sponsor Announcer
Or Joy Williams, her father was silent.
- [26:13]
Ada Limon
Slowly he passed his hand over his hair. This usually meant that he was traveling to a place immune to her presence.
- [26:22]
Sponsor Announcer
A place that indeed contradicted her presence.
- [26:25]
Ada Limon
She might as well go to lunch.
- [26:28]
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Listen to news stories, or dive into our archive of great fiction. You can find the work of your favorite fiction writers and discover new ones. Listen and follow the Writer's Voice wherever you get your podcasts. When your love for sneakers has you chasing limited editions, classics, and rare finds, go to ebay, score your Once in a Blue Moon pair and check off your wish list for those fresh kicks. Get authentic streetwear and expert verified accessories. Think timeless watches, vintage designer bags, and more jewelry than you can wear. Ebay the new place for new pre loved vintage and rare fashion. Yeah, ebay. Things people love.
- [27:16]
Kevin Young
I'm still a little stunned, I'll confess. I mean, I'm having chills and seeing things. Beautifully read and done. Epic almost doesn't Describe it because it's a eulogy. It's also, for a time, it's a journey, I would say. And you talk about journey so much in the poem so well. It's beautiful.
- [27:37]
Ada Limon
Thank you.
- [27:38]
Kevin Young
And to hear it again is really special.
- [27:40]
Ada Limon
Thank you.
- [27:41]
Kevin Young
I think for me, maybe we can start with the end, which is that kind of breathlessness you have. You don't read it that way, of course. You have a command of breath that many of us would envy. But I was looking and I was like, is that a 12 line, 15 line sentence? You know, we talked briefly about Cesuro, but like the kind of commas, the. The rolling quality you were trying to get there. Was that in the original? Or was that something you worked at? And how does that echo for you, to use your phrase?
- [28:14]
Ada Limon
Yeah, I think that for me. Thank you. First of all, thank you. The commas. For me, making those clauses really understood are me really hoping that I can handle the long sentence that's coming. And so I want to make the clarity of the clauses really clean so that the reader isn't confused. And I think that I'm asking them to go on this pretty intense journey that goes many different places. And so, you know, it's a gift sometimes not to use punctuation in a poem and to let things kind of be slippery and to find those sort of slippery places where the meaning shifts and there's mystery all around. And this is a poem that denied that this poem wanted clarity and it wanted a sort of firm grasp on the language itself. Yeah, not all my poems are like this, but it's a very muscular poem. And I think it's because I knew what was coming in my mind and I really wanted to honor that. It was being wrought. Like I could feel it being made, and I didn't want to release it. I had to hold it. And I think those commas are me sort of holding it before it kind of releases at the end.
- [29:35]
Kevin Young
Well, it almost doesn't want to end. You know, it's an ending that is interested in, to quote another title of yours, the Endlessness. It's interested in an afterlife, I would say, into kind of what persists, what lasts. And then this part that I think is so well said. So when the. So, you know, well, there's two sos. She was already almost gone and I wept and his voice sounded so strong. Those rhymes of gone and strong, those slant rhymes are so beautiful. So when the hospice nurse came and said, you, you know, there's that great break. Have no religion, right I didn't know how to answer. Break. And, you know, you could have stopped there. But it says, because we did, it was this, it was all those years. You know, that line too, because we did it was this, it was all those years is a kind of emblem of the poem as well. And I love that. I don't believe that. Inharmonious, frankly, since you're such a beautiful singer. I loved hearing you sing early in the poem. But, you know, this idea of prayer, you know, it's a kind of ars poetica too, in a way. Like this is what joining voices means.
- [30:45]
Ada Limon
Yeah.
- [30:46]
Kevin Young
Were you thinking about that?
- [30:47]
Ada Limon
I was absolutely thinking about that. Because I think there's something. And I don't know if you've had this experience, but I know for myself, you know, I love to sing. And anytime that, you know, it could be something as simple as, you know, a carol or like someone, you know, all of us just hearing a song coming on at the radio and all of us deciding to sing along to it, it will make me teary almost every time there's something in me that it actually expands the chest. And I think, oh, I'm going to burst out crying. And song does that. And I think poems can do that. And I was really trying to marry the two. That feeling of what the music and the shift of the music can do to the heart, to the soul, as you experience it. And the hard part, of course, was to make this polyvocal without other voices within it. So you had to hear my brother, and you had to hear my father, and you had to hear my grandfather. You know, all of these voices you had to have without really being able to, you know, have them in the room with me.
- [31:59]
Kevin Young
Yeah, well, I think that is part of the kind of commas, because it's a little bit of rhetoric, too. There's some asides and rethinking and recasting that happens. And speaking of the mind, it feels like we're in the presence of a mind that is trying to get it right, as you said, because there's something about that. And trying to answer this question, which is kind of a presumptuous question that the person asks. Then they don't mean it to be, I wouldn't think. But you have no religion, right? I mean, that's such a funny way to say on this deathbed, which. So beautifully put. And this is another one which was just their bed, really. I mean, you can't see me clutching my chest. Because I think you are expanding our chest in that part of the poem, but focusing for a moment on the last few lines where you say something to pass the time, like beauty, like going to the mountaintop, just to go. I love that because it takes us into poetry itself, I suppose, and this idea of beauty and truth and what is beauty for? And you're saying that it is actually for itself, you know, that it is something to pass the time. And that there is the song's distinctions that I want to talk about for a minute between the journey song and the arrival song. And which do you think this is?
- [33:28]
Ada Limon
I've thought about that question before, and I think this poem is both. I think that it's the journey song and I think it's the arrival song. And I think it actually almost right at the middle where that line happens, it marries the two like it becomes the present song at the end. And it begins with the song of the journey.
- [33:55]
Kevin Young
One was about passing the time, it says. The other about break bellowing your presence to the rocks and stones. I don't know why. I don't know.
- [34:06]
Ada Limon
What was the difference, right, Between a song sung. What was the difference? And you're really trying to think about it. And I remember asking myself that question, really, what is the difference? And I know there's a difference. There's something that's.
- [34:18]
Kevin Young
Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right on that. It's like the campfire song is different than the, you know, 99 bottles of beer song.
- [34:25]
Ada Limon
Like the thing that you're like, okay, there is a sort of a passing of time. Like, this is like, okay, this is a journey song. Let's sing this on the road. And then to get there and then to be like, let's join in song while we're here. And there's something so, so different about the two. And I'm not sure if I know how to put it into words, except that this poem does its best to try to decipher it in some way. But they are different.
- [34:52]
Kevin Young
Well, and I think, you know, we were talking about bloodlines. You definitely are thinking about that. The difference between sort of Mal Hombre and songs about La Frontera versus, you know, blue moon, 500 mile. I mean, I love that you're honoring these different folk traditions. I wonder if there's something very American about all of it, which is to say many American songs are about the road. They're about traveling, they're about exile in some way. Do you think this poem thinks about that?
- [35:25]
Ada Limon
Yeah. Oh, very much so. Even to bring up Lydia Mendoza, you know, Lydia Mendoza, the Great singer who was from Mexico and really spent most of her life on the border of Texas and Mexico. And she used to wear incredibly beautiful, ornate, large gowns that were often the color of the entire Mexican flag. And she used to say, I have to dress as Mexico because I don't know where my country is. And so I have to be my country. And I think about that so much and how she represented herself and her people. And then for it to be in my grandfather's voice, right. That he wanted that too, to be singing in Spanish and to be, you know, he spoke with us almost always English, but he would sing in Spanish. And that to me was like, oh, right. Because that's his country, you know, holding onto that part of where he was born. And so I do think there's something very American about this poem. And in fact, when you brought up the question at the end, you know, you don't have a religion, right. There is a level in which there is a proclamation at the end of what we put our faith in. And that faith comes in many different ways and many different forms. I'm putting my faith in music and I'm putting my faith in singing and I'm putting my faith in beauty. Like going to the mountaintop just to go like this is. It doesn't have to be a structure of agreed upon rules that make it a religion or make something that you can believe in or have faith in. It can just be a feeling.
- [37:16]
Kevin Young
I can't put it better than that. That was so well said. I love how the title kind of captures that doubleness, you know, And I was looking back over when we talked about the poem, it once had a different title, but I think this one seems so. I can't imagine it with whatever the title was before.
- [37:35]
Ada Limon
Yeah, I think this is the title, you know.
- [37:39]
Kevin Young
Well, it was there. It's like an American phrase, come hell or high water. But you don't say come hell or high water. I love that it's just hell or high water, these two tragic options, but that also somehow are celebrated. And I don't know, there's something about that. Losing all their money and they thought was safe come hell or high water, you know, and almost like they would have said that to themselves.
- [38:00]
Ada Limon
Yeah, yeah, they did. Yeah, yeah. And so the phrase, I think, really brings in and elucidates to religion and of course, but it also brings in the idea of high water, which is tears and which is rivers and which is the moment where all things come together in water. So I feel like there's sort of an elemental part to that phrase that, yes, it brings in that sort of faith and religion and the phrases, but then it also brings in the earth.
- [38:37]
Kevin Young
It brings in the natural world, which is one of the subjects of your new anthology that you're doing. You are here. Tell me about it and what brought it to you. And maybe also, if we back up a little, how do you approach the Poet Lordship? How do you embody that, besides, with such grace?
- [38:57]
Ada Limon
Oh, thank you. It's been an amazing journey so far. And one of the things they tell you when they invite you to be the Poet Laureate is you can make this whatever you want it to be. I didn't have an answer for that. I was following in these amazing footsteps of Joy Harjo and Tracy K. Smith and Juan Felipe Herrera, Natasha Trethewey, all of these incredible people I've watched and admired and really have held in my heart as mentors of powerful grace in the role. And I think one of the things they asked me on that, I think it was the very first trip to the Library of Congress. They said, what would you like your signature project to be? And, of course, you know, you're completely overwhelmed. You have. You know, you're in this, the largest library in the world. It's so stunning and beautiful. You know, this title has been gifted to you. You're thinking of Gwendolyn Brooks and Robert Haas and all of these incredible laureateships that have come before, and you think, how could I do anything? They've done all the incredible projects. They've done such amazing things. And I knew, for me, that it had to have something to do with the natural world. I mean, you've known my poems for years, Kevin. And I feel like nature is a big part of the full force of my poems and of my being. So I wanted to do something with the natural world. And then, how do you do that? What does that look like? How do you. And so the project came to me kind of in two ways. The first way was thinking about, can we put poems in nature in some ways? And of course, I had these really wild, outlandish thoughts of, like, can we reseed a forest land that's been burned with poems that are made out of seeds and we'll drop them from planes? Which I maintain is still a really cool idea.
- [41:09]
Kevin Young
I'm sure they were like, do you have other ideas as well as this great, terrific one?
- [41:13]
Ada Limon
Yeah, they were like, that's so wonderful. Let's just rein it in a little bit. So, you know Yeah, I had, like, let's do installations across the borders. Let's, you know, all of these things. But it really came down to this idea of you are here poetry in the natural world. And there's two main elements of it, which is, you know, the first one is the anthology of 50 original poems done by really phenomenal contemporary poets that all gave me their original poems that were just incredible, like, emotionally. Really. One of my favorite things that's ever happened to me was receiving all these poems, truly. And then the second element is poetry in the parks, which will be poem installations in seven different parks, national parks, in the seven different regions of the national parks. And I'll be going to visit all of them and unveiling these art installations that will also have a prompt on it that will encourage people to write their own you are here poem. And I wanted those two things to be there together because I love the national parks, and they're such sacred spaces to us here in the United States. And yet there's an intentionality going to the park. Like, you go. Right. You go to nature. And so that's really beautiful. But I also wanted to balance that with this anthology where poems and nature could take on a multiplicity of meaning, that it could be urban spaces, that it could be the complications of being in a different kind of body in the world, in nature, how our bodies are nature, all of these things. And so, for me, the two elements are really what makes the project have a sense of wholeness.
- [43:23]
Kevin Young
And when will the parks happen?
- [43:26]
Ada Limon
In June, and we'll go through December of 2024.
- [43:32]
Kevin Young
Yeah, 2024. Amazing.
- [43:34]
Ada Limon
Yeah.
- [43:34]
Kevin Young
Well, I love the book itself, and I'm so eager to see the park project come to fruition. But I also love the title, you are here. You know, it's something you see, of course, on maps of all kinds, but especially in the national park. I think of it as so pointed. Maybe it's in red, maybe it's a dot, you know, and you also. It's sort of cosmic as well. And I assume you were thinking of that.
- [43:58]
Ada Limon
Yeah, you know, it was a big part of coming up with the project, was trying to name it. The right framing, right. That we so desperately work at and towards in our poems is trying to find the right form for whatever we are experiencing in our bodies and in our hearts. And this, for me, I was actually on a hike in a local park here that I adore called Raven Run, and I looked up at the map, and it had a little sign, and it said, you are here. And I was at a time where my mind was really busy and I was thinking about all the many projects I wanted to do and all the things that were going on in my personal and public life. And I thought, right, what a good reminder. You are here. Be here, be here. And kind of in the way that Carrie Fountain's poem has that spell like quality that became a sort of mantra as I went for my walk along the Kentucky River. And I just heard it in my head over and over again, you are here. And I came back and I emailed the group in the Library of Congress and I said, this is the title.
- [45:14]
Kevin Young
Well, thank you so much for talking with us today. It's been great to catch up and to hear these wonderful poems.
- [45:21]
Ada Limon
Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure to talk to you.
- [45:24]
Kevin Young
Kevin Helder High Water by Ada Limone as well as Carrie Fountain's yous Belong to the World can be found on new yorker.com Carrie Fountain's most recent book of poems is this Life. Hailey Mone's latest collection is the Hurting Kind.
- [45:42]
Sponsor Announcer
You may subscribe to this podcast, the Fiction podcast, the Writer's Voice Podcast, and the Politics and More podcast by searching for the New Yorker in your podcast app. You can hear more poetry read by the authors on newyorker.com and on the New Yorker app, available from the App Store or from Google Play. The theme music is the Corner by Christian Scott Attunde Adjua, courtesy of Stretch Music and Rope a Dope. The New Yorker Poetry Podcast is produced by Jill Duboff with help from Hannah Eisen. Hi, I'm Susan Glaser. I'm Jane Mayer.
- [46:35]
Ada Limon
And I'm Evan Osnos. And we host the Washington Roundtable from the New Yorker's Political Scene Podcast. What are some of the topics we.
- [46:41]
Kevin Young
Like to get into on this show, guys?
- [46:44]
Sponsor Announcer
Well, I mean, let's point out we have a very tough job in this election year of 2024. You know, for me, it's the fact that we get to deal with this together. So a little bit of a group therapy session now. But for me, what's really fantastic is to get behind the scenes and hear what you guys are picking up about what's really going on. Everybody sees the headlines, but you guys fill in the gaps.
- [47:10]
Kevin Young
Occasionally we get somebody to come on.
- [47:11]
Ada Limon
Too, and I'm always smarter for it. If you get a great historian who.
- [47:14]
Kevin Young
Can tell you about a presidential election.
- [47:16]
Ada Limon
50, 60 years ago, often it can.
- [47:17]
Kevin Young
Help you understand understand about what's happening today.
- [47:20]
Sponsor Announcer
So if you're looking for weekly insights into what's going on inside the Beltway. Join us every Friday on the Washington Roundtable, part of the New Yorker's Political Scene podcast.
- [47:38]
Ada Limon
From prx.