The New Yorker: Poetry

Episode: April Bernard Reads John Ashbery (January 28, 2026)

Host: Kevin Young (Poetry Editor, The New Yorker)
Guest: April Bernard (Poet, Novelist, Professor at Skidmore College)

Overview

This episode features poet April Bernard reading and discussing John Ashbery’s “A Worldly Country,” followed by a reading of her own poem “Beagle or Something.” The conversation, led by Kevin Young, explores the layered complexities of Ashbery’s work, the pleasure and challenge of difficult poetry, the play between seriousness and humor in both poets’ work, and the function of music and play in poetic creation.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction to April Bernard and Ashbery ([01:01]-[01:45])

• April Bernard: Acclaimed poet, novelist, Professor of English and Creative Writing at Skidmore College. Author of multiple poetry collections.
• Podcast Format: Each episode, a poet picks a New Yorker archive poem and discusses it before reading one of their own.

2. Reading and Interpretation: "A Worldly Country" by John Ashbery ([02:34]-[04:34])

• April Bernard reads “A Worldly Country” by John Ashbery in full ([02:34]).
• Ashbery’s Unique Quality: Bernard admires Ashbery’s poems for being “so hard to understand,” yet feeling intuitively clear within their world. She notes his simultaneous “funniness and deep seriousness”—a space she calls “his best place” ([01:55]).
• Points out the rarity and playfulness of Ashbery’s use of rhymed couplets in this poem.

3. Exploring Ashbery’s Methods and Themes

The Power of Being Lost ([04:34]-[06:09])

• Kevin Young highlights how Ashbery’s poems blend strangeness with musicality and move from catalogues of "not this" imagery to moments of groundedness.
• The poem is “about how chaos in the outer world comes into the inner world,” and reads “almost like a prayer at the end” ([05:14]-[05:52]; April Bernard).

Disordering Narratives and Catalogues ([06:09]-[08:20])

• Ashbery’s cataloguing (“not the smoothness…”) relates to methods in "Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror," keeping the reader both off-balance and engaged ([07:02]).
• Bernard compares his style to abstract expressionist and pop artists: “He’ll just throw everything with the kitchen sink into the poem, whether it’s Tweety Bird or novels or this kind of thing on the radio…” ([07:24])

"He’s also painting like an Abstract Expressionist painting or like a Jasper Johns or like a Rauschenberg, he’s creating these visuals that you have to stare at for a while to make sense of..."
— April Bernard [07:39]

Collage and the Pleasure of Difficulty ([08:20]-[10:07])

• The collage aspect of Ashbery’s poetry is crucial: “Many different wholes matched together... I love that kind of collage aspect.”
• Bernard sees “the pleasure of difficulty” as central: difficult poetry creates “a prickle of attention on your brain,” making comprehension a uniquely pleasurable task.

“The difficulty becomes part of the pleasure... diving makes things comprehensible in a different way. And Ashbery’s very much like that.”
— April Bernard [09:02]

Moments of Clarity, Humor, and Rhyme ([10:07]-[13:12])

• Young notes the poem’s internal "rock in the river"—moments where readers can briefly grasp clarity; Bernard agrees these are often jokes or recognizably “normal” cultural references ([10:56]).
• Discussion of Ashbery’s rhymed couplets: Bernard points out their almost parodic use, juxtaposing organization with chaos.

“It’s almost as if the rhymed couplet gives the poem a leg to stand on, even if the things being said are slightly chaotic.”
— April Bernard [12:11]

4. Ashbery’s Poetics and Literary Context ([13:12]-[17:20])

• Young and Bernard consider the poem’s closing as double-edged: “like a prayer, which is reaching out and not solving the problem” ([14:09]).
• Allusions made to Emily Dickinson’s hymn-like influence and to Frank O’Hara’s “To the Harbormaster.”
• Bernard recounts meeting Ashbery and humorously arguing with him about Dickinson ([15:02]).
• Examines the poet’s “fight with the form,” paralleling Dickinson’s adaptation of inherited structures and Ashbery’s re-interpretation of the couplet ([16:23]-[16:51]).

“It is the poet’s instinct to fight the form, the very form that they love.”
— April Bernard [16:51]

5. Worldliness, Privacy, and the Ashbery Circle ([17:20]-[22:34])

• The double meaning of "worldly" (wisdom vs. temptation) is considered; Bernard sees the poem’s tension as existential rather than simply moral.
• She likens Ashbery’s poetry to overhearing a “small circle of friends,” with the broader public as listeners at the edge:

“I feel as a reader sometimes like I’m a kid and I’m listening to the grownups talking in the next room...I catch the drift...I hear the mood, but I’m not entirely sure what on earth they’re talking about.”
— April Bernard [19:20]

• Discussion on teaching Ashbery: Bernard starts with more accessible poems (“The Instruction Manual,” “Self Portrait…”) before inviting students deeper, likening the process to gazing at a challenging painting until it “coheres” ([21:30]).

6. April Bernard Reads "Beagle or Something" ([25:34]-[27:15])

• Bernard introduces the poem as originating from a “very hard” time living in New Haven, CT ([25:20]).
• Full reading by Bernard ([25:39]-[27:15]).
• Poem details an emotionally raw moment in her car, the intersection of music, nature, grief, and the longing for transcendence.

7. Bernard's Poetic Method: Beauty, Pain, and the Soul ([27:15]-[34:34])

• Young notes the poem’s movement between alienation and vulnerable transcendence.
• Bernard reflects on the intensity of encountering "staggeringly beautiful" moments while in pain, and the poem’s attempt “to make the beauty bring me out of the pain” ([28:48], [29:14]).
• She discusses the “Romantic project” of expressing emotion in a contemporary idiom, referencing Shelley and Romanticism’s influence.

“The whole book...was like a tightrope act. And I’m not sure I didn’t fall off.”
— April Bernard [32:12]

• Emphasizes striving for the “soul” rather than just feelings: “Trying to latch on to something that’s bigger than just feelings...nevertheless in the self. And that, I suppose I still believe, can keep us stronger than our mere feelings…” ([33:47])

8. Artistic Invention and the Play of Creation ([36:18]-[39:39])

• Bernard’s fictional composer “Annelisa Beagle” is entirely invented, with the poem’s title and musical reference part of her poetic play.
• She describes sections of her book as “liner notes” from made-up composers, emphasizing playfulness alongside seriousness.

“There’s a huge part of my poetry that’s just about play...When you think in language, as you well know as a poet, when you think in language, you also play in language. And so that’s— it’s like my sandbox.”
— April Bernard [38:17]

• They discuss the importance and difficulty of fostering playfulness in students, culminating in Bernard’s students singing childhood songs in class—“wore them down…to being able to play” ([40:13]).

9. Music, Lyric Tradition, and Bernard’s Latest Book ([41:07]-[44:06])

• The lyric tradition’s roots in music: “If it doesn’t work for me on the ear, it isn’t gonna work at all” ([41:07]).
• Bernard’s latest book The World Behind the World explores a spiritual realm “where there is justice,” with frequent poems on music and spiritual searching.
• Notable: her poem “Closest is Music” includes the line, “We Find God there.”

“[Hopkins] is creating musical measures...if you saw a Rauschenberg in a museum, you might have to look at it for a long time until it starts to cohere for you and make sense. So I talk about that and the music of it, of course, too, that a lot of it is like listening to music.”
— April Bernard [43:40]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “But when you’re in the middle of his poem, it makes perfect sense, even if you couldn’t possibly paraphrase it to anyone else.” — April Bernard on John Ashbery ([01:55])
• “Diving makes things comprehensible in a different way. And Ashbery’s very much like that.” ([09:02])
• “You’re completely lost. And then he...puts a little...rock in the middle of the river that you can step on. You know, it’s like, oh, here’s my stepping stone.” — Bernard on moments of clarity in Ashbery ([10:56])
• “It is the poet’s instinct to fight the form, the very form that they love.” ([16:51])
• “I feel as a reader sometimes like I’m a kid...listening to the grownups talking in the next room...I hear the mood, but I’m not entirely sure what on earth they’re talking about.” ([19:20])
• “The whole book was like a tightrope act. And I’m not sure I didn’t fall off.” ([32:12])
• “When you think in language...you also play in language. So that’s— it’s like my sandbox.” ([38:17])

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:01] — Episode introduction & guest bio
• [01:45] — Why “A Worldly Country” was chosen
• [02:34] — April Bernard reads “A Worldly Country”
• [04:34] — Discussion begins: Music, difficulty, form
• [10:56] — Establishing moments of clarity in Ashbery
• [15:02] — Anecdote: Meeting Ashbery, Dickinson, poetic quarrels
• [19:20] — On Ashbery’s audience and poetic intimacy
• [21:30] — Teaching Ashbery, patience and comprehension
• [25:34] — Bernard reads “Beagle or Something”
• [27:15] — Bernard dissects her poem: pain, beauty, Romanticism
• [36:18] — Bernard discusses inventing composers and poetic play
• [40:13] — Teaching play and vulnerability in poetry
• [41:07] — Lyric tradition, music, and Bernard’s new collection
• [43:40] — Linking Hopkins, music, and poetic measures

Conclusion

This warm, incisive episode captures the elusive pleasures of poetry’s most enigmatic forms, the musical and mysterious qualities of both Ashbery’s and Bernard’s verse, and the profound joy at the heart of poetic play. Listeners are guided through a poetic “worldly country” in which pain, beauty, searching, and laughter intertwine, all while learning how poets both wrestle with and revel in the forms they inherit and invent.

Poems discussed:

• “A Worldly Country” by John Ashbery (full text)
• “Beagle or Something” by April Bernard (full text)

Books referenced:

• Blackbird Bye Bye (April Bernard)
• The World behind the World (April Bernard)
• Commotion of the Birds (John Ashbery)
• Parallel Movement of the Hands: Five Unfinished Longer Works (John Ashbery)

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