Edward Hirsch Reads Gerald Stern

Summary

The New Yorker: Poetry Podcast – Episode Summary

Title: Edward Hirsch Reads Gerald Stern
Host/Author: WNYC Studios and The New Yorker
Release Date: March 26, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of The New Yorker: Poetry, Kevin Young, the poetry editor of The New Yorker Magazine, welcomes the esteemed poet Edward Hirsch. Hirsch, a recipient of numerous accolades including the MacArthur Fellowship and the National Book Critics Circle Award, engages in an insightful conversation about Gerald Stern's poem "96 Van Damme" and Hirsch's own work, notably his poem "Man on a Fire Escape."

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Gerald Stern's "96 Van Damme"

Selection and Significance

Edward Hirsch begins by explaining his personal connection to Gerald Stern, likening Stern to an older brother who offered him his first job in 1975. This deep-rooted relationship influenced Hirsch's selection of Stern's poem "96 Van Damme" from the New Yorker Archive and the anthology A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker, 1925-2025.

"[Gerald Stern] was like an older brother to me. He hired me for my first job at Poets in the Schools in Pennsylvania in 1975."
— Edward Hirsch (01:53)

Reading of "96 Van Damme"

Hirsch proceeds to read Stern's "96 Van Damme", a vivid portrayal of pushing a bed through the urban landscape of New York City.

Analysis and Discussion

Post-reading, Hirsch delves into the poem's blend of the literal and surreal. He highlights the urban setting and the poem's emotional core—an intense longing for home and shelter amidst the city's vastness.

"It's a poem that gets stranger the more you look at it... But driving it, I think, is this kind of emotional desperation or longing to find a home, to go home."
— Edward Hirsch (04:37)

Kevin Young remarks on the poem's American idiom and its balance between the mystical and the mundane, noting the tension that makes the poem resonate.

"There is this kind of tension in it between the mystical and what we might think of as the mundane..."
— Kevin Young (07:10)

Hirsch further explores the poem's themes of exhaustion, maturity, and the interplay between personal longing and the urban environment.

"I think what we feel in poems like '96 Van Damme' is the exuberance of a young poet, but the experience and maturity of someone who's in middle age."
— Edward Hirsch (10:10)

The discussion underscores how Stern's work embodies a rootedness in place while yearning for something beyond, capturing a universal yet distinctly American essence.

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Edward Hirsch's "Man on a Fire Escape"

Introduction to Hirsch's Poem

Transitioning to his own work, Hirsch introduces his poem "Man on a Fire Escape", published in the November 25, 1991 issue of The New Yorker. He reflects on the honor of having his poem featured in the magazine, particularly one that encapsulates the urban experience.

"I'm very fond of fire escapes in poems, but I'm very fond of this kind of urban scenery."
— Edward Hirsch (19:43)

Reading of "Man on a Fire Escape"

Hirsch reads his poem, which depicts a near-apocalyptic vision witnessed from a fire escape, blending the mundane with the extraordinary.

Analysis and Discussion

Post-reading, Hirsch discusses the poem's exploration of liminal spaces—both physically and metaphorically—and its roots in urban loneliness inspired by Edward Hopper's paintings.

"The loneliness in it, I think. And the American quality of it."
— Edward Hirsch (27:16)

Kevin Young appreciates the poem's epic quality within a lyric framework, noting the tension between the ordinary twilight and the apocalyptic vision that unfolds.

"There's something wonderful about it... Where had he crossed to? Nowhere."
— Kevin Young (24:19)

Hirsch elaborates on his creative process, expressing how the poem balances the vernacular with the romantic, rooted firmly in the urban landscape.

"The language moves between something vernacular and something more romantic."
— Edward Hirsch (27:42)

The conversation highlights the poem's portrayal of imagination's power and its ability to convey profound experiences beyond what prose can achieve.

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Forthcoming Work: "My Childhood in Pieces"

Overview of Hirsch's Memoir

Edward Hirsch introduces his upcoming memoir, My Childhood in Pieces, described as a blend of stand-up comedy and an elegy for his upbringing in Skokie, a suburb of Chicago.

"Each one [piece] has a turn, as in a poem."
— Edward Hirsch (32:37)

He explains the memoir's structure, which uses short, poem-like pieces inspired by his parents' sayings to narrate his childhood stories with comedic timing and an underlying elegiac tone.

Themes and Inspirations

Hirsch discusses the memoir's exploration of cultural shifts, particularly the transformation of his lower-middle-class Jewish Chicago environment of the 50s and 60s.

"It started out as stand up comedy. And then it also had this elegiac quality."
— Edward Hirsch (30:54)

Kevin Young connects Hirsch's use of humor to survival, noting the memoir's ability to blend tough jokes with poignant reflections.

"The jokes are, like, hard, but they're funny."
— Edward Hirsch (31:19)

Hirsch shares anecdotes from his book, illustrating the blend of humor and tenderness that defines his narrative style.

"My grandmother said, 'If I had a brain sale, I'd charge the most for yours.'"
— Edward Hirsch (31:34)

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Conclusion

Kevin Young wraps up the conversation by highlighting the accessible availability of both Gerald Stern's "96 Van Damme" and Edward Hirsch's "Man on a Fire Escape" on newyorker.com, alongside the anthology A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker, 1925-2025. He also promotes Hirsch's forthcoming memoir, My Childhood in Pieces, inviting listeners to explore the intersection of humor and memory.

"Man on a Fire Escape by Edward Hirsch, as well as Gerald Stern's 96 Van Damme, can be found on newyorker.com..."
— Kevin Young (33:32)

Edward Hirsch expresses his gratitude for the conversation, emphasizing the thrill of sharing his work and insights.

"It's a thrill. Thanks for having me, Kevin."
— Edward Hirsch (33:29)

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This episode offers a deep dive into the art of poetry, showcasing the intricate balance between personal experience and universal themes, as explored through the works of Gerald Stern and Edward Hirsch. Through engaging readings and thoughtful analysis, listeners gain a richer understanding of the poetic landscape as curated by The New Yorker.

Transcript

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[Kevin Young]

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 choose a poem from the New Yorker Archive to read and discuss. Then they read one of their own poems that's been published in the magazine today. These poems are also from A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker, 1925-2025, the anthology that's just now out today. My guest is Edward Hirsch, whose honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, a National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pablo Neruda Presidential Medal of Honor, and the National Jewish Book Award. Eddie, welcome. Thanks so much for joining me.

[Edward Hirsch]

It's nice to be here. Kevin, thanks for having me.

[Kevin Young]

It's great to see you. The first poem you've selected to read is 96 Van Damme by Gerald Stern. What was it about this poem that caught your attention in the archive and the anthology?

[Edward Hirsch]

First of all, Jerry Stern was like an older brother to me. He hired me for my first job at Poets in the Schools in Pennsylvania in 1975. He had a fifth floor walk up in New York and I visited him on Van Damme Street. So when I saw the poem In 1977, I was 27 years old. I just never seen a poem like this. Also had known a poet who had written such a poem, so that just leapt out at me in 77. And it leapt out at me again in the anthology.

[Kevin Young]

Wonderful. Let's hear it. This is 96 Van Damme by Gerald Stern.

[Edward Hirsch]

96 Van Damme. I'm going to Carry my bed into New York City tonight, complete with dangling sheets and ripped blankets. I'm going to push it across three dark highways or coast along under 600,000 faint stars. I want to have it with me so I don't have to beg for too much shelter from my weak and exhausted friends. I want to be as close as possible to my pillow in case a dream or a fantasy should pass by. I want to fall asleep on my own fire escape and wake up dazed and hungry to the sound of garbage grinding in the street below and the smell of coffee cooking in the window above.

[Kevin Young]

That was 96 Van Damme by Gerald Stern, which was published in the July 4, 1977 issue of the New Yorker. I love that it was in the July 4th issue. I mean, it's such an American idiom that he's working in and creating. And that incantatory quality. And it's not just that sort of echoey repetition. There's something about Stern's point of view in this poem, like I want to be out there. I want to be, you know, wake to the sound of garbage grinding, which is such a specific but accurate description. I mean, how did you take. Take that sort of walk up quality of the poem?

[Edward Hirsch]

It's a poem that gets stranger the more you look at it, at least to me. Yeah, I love the feel of it. I love the urban landscape. I like to say that city people have natures too. I love that this is a really New York poem of a certain kind. But it's so literal. But then the closer you look at it, it just has this weird surreal quality. But driving it, I think, is this kind of emotional desperation or longing to find a home, to go home. And that's why I think it's sort of located at 96 Van Damme. It's like that's the destination. I'm going to find a home there. But it seems so natural when you read it that it takes you a moment to go, why is he pushing a bed? Why is he pushing a bed?

[Kevin Young]

Why doesn't he have a bed already? Well, and I love this idea. Across three dark highways or coast along under 600,000 faint stars. And that idea of the stars, they're there but you can't see them. And I feel like that's almost what shelter is in the poem. It's a destination. It's a distant thing for him, but he's sort of seeking it and can almost see it totally.

[Edward Hirsch]

Also, it's so weirdly specific, like 600,000. But also the three dark highways is like, this is literally where I'm going. So it's like you can map it as I'm walking there. But then under this great vast world outside, 600,000 stars.

[Kevin Young]

Right. A world that he's kind of created for us, I think. And, you know, that it's an accurate address, you know, But I think it becomes more than that in the end. You know, it becomes a place not just of shelter, but of dreams, fantasy, but also his friends. I love this kind of line. I'm still working it out. I wanna have it with me so I don't have to beg for too much shelter from my weak and exhausted friends. I mean, is that a compliment to call your friends weak and exhausted? Or is it, like, just, this is the reality of, you know, 1977, July 4th. Like, this is his sort of reality.

[Edward Hirsch]

I don't think it's meant to be a compliment, but I don't think it's an insult either. I think it's literally meant to be a description of, like, all my friends are just worn out. Everyone is just beat. And so I don't want to ask for shelter from them. Although some of it is just so surreal. Like, it's very funny to say, I want to keep my pillow with me just in case I see a dream coming by or get a fantasy here.

[Kevin Young]

Right, right.

[Edward Hirsch]

The combination of the literal and the surreal in this poem was, I think, quite wonderful.

[Kevin Young]

Well, and also, of course, this is a kind of fantasy. It starts, I am going to. I'm going to. And then it's, I want to. I want to. There's a slight gap there between the wishes and the fulfillment of them.

[Edward Hirsch]

Totally agree. There's a kind of drama, like, I'm pushing my bed, which is very physical and literal. And then there's the bigger dream.

[Kevin Young]

Right.

[Edward Hirsch]

And the poem, I think, moves between these very specific things. The address, the 600,000 stars, the three highways, the pillow. And then there's this other vast yearning in it that you can't quite put your finger on, but you get a sense of, like, I just need some kind of rest for my longing.

[Kevin Young]

There is this kind of tension in it between the mystical and what we might think of as the mundane, which I think Stern saw as almost interchangeable. Or it's through the mundane, maybe, that you get to the mystical. Is that how you see it, or.

[Edward Hirsch]

Totally. We don't leave the earthly plane very quickly. You sort of stay in it. And that's why the sort of setting of New York City is so crucial and it's also like. It's maybe not even just mundane, maybe a little hostile. I mean, it's like garbage trucks and highways. And it's not what you traditionally think of the pastoral. It's really an urban scene, and it's challenging. And then behind this is this dream for a dream or a fantasy or a longing or some rest.

[Kevin Young]

That's right.

[Edward Hirsch]

Or some shelter.

[Nomi Fry]

Well.

[Kevin Young]

And I think of the pastoral as the country, as glimpse from the city. You know, it's a citified dream of what country life would be. But this is almost like the city glimpse from the stars or something. It has a cosmic point of view, even in its intimacies. And I love that tension between the cosmic and the, you know, weak and exhausted between sleep and dream, you know, and that tension. He rides really wonderfully in the poem.

[Edward Hirsch]

This is part of a group of poems he wrote for his second book called Lucky Life.

[Kevin Young]

What a great book.

[Edward Hirsch]

And it's just a great book. And it all has this kind of quality that begins with a kind of sense of exhaustion and I would say, even failure and a kind of need to kind of rest. Like, you're already worn out when you start this poem. It's like carrying your bed. And some people, I think, think he's homeless in the poem. But I don't think so because he's got an address to go to.

[Kevin Young]

Right, right.

[Edward Hirsch]

But he's so tired that when he falls asleep at the end, he's on the fire escape. He's not in his bed. That he's bringing up the fifth floor.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah, yeah.

[Edward Hirsch]

It's an odd tone. Cause there's a playful element in it.

[Kevin Young]

Sure.

[Edward Hirsch]

Yeah.

[Kevin Young]

We're kind of losing the humor and talking about it as if it's super serious when it's not. It's like, I'm gonna carry my bed into New York City tonight. Okay, Exactly. You have me at carry. We've seen stranger things on the subway than someone carrying a bed.

[Edward Hirsch]

Yeah, we've seen people pushing beds, but it's got that weird quality of, like, a long journey of pushing your bed across highways through town.

[Kevin Young]

And I think it's a physical bed, but it's also. I mean, what else is more personal? And literally, you spend probably most of your time in it. And it's a place of dream for him, but also a place of rest. But being restive and not restful at all.

[Edward Hirsch]

Totally agree. I think, like, if Gaston Bachelard, who wrote the Poetics of Space, was talking about this poem, you'd see that he'd talk about how the bed is intimate and interior place. And now it's outside and we're moving through this external world of New York City, which is slightly hostile, to seek a place of shelter in the bed, which is so personal.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah, well. And the poetry's like that. It's such an apt metaphor. Is it a ars poetica? Is it a poem about what poetry should be?

[Edward Hirsch]

It may be his arse poetic. I'm not sure it's everyone's. But, yes, I agree. It sort of embodies what I think the work is about here. This physical plan, like rooted in the earth, but this also longing for something beyond.

[Kevin Young]

For me, I think what's interesting about Stern is the way that it does feel like he's coming to it with a maturity and an earned quality, like an earned yearning.

[Edward Hirsch]

He wrote an essay called Some Secrets, which is about why he never wrote a good poem before he was 50 years old. He was writing all through his 20s, 30s and 40s, but he never succeeded. And it was only in his late 40s and early 50s when he really began to start with the fact that he was a failure, that he had one little small press book that he was teaching at community college, that he began in this sense of failure in middle age, but with the exuberance of a young poet. And I think what we feel in poems like 96 Van Damme is the exuberance of a young poet, but the experience and maturity of someone who's in middle age. And I think it's the same thing with joy. It's an earned joy. It's not an easy one. There's a kind of earned comfort here, or earned rest as he gets to his own fire escape. But again, you're sleeping in this perilous where you hear the garbage trucks, you're hungry, you're stunned, you're at home. But the sort of smell of coffee. Comforting.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah, yeah. And those C sounds at the last line, the smell of coffee cooking in the wind. You know, there's something about that. That again, he's, as you said, between the street below the window above. You're always in this sort of in between state.

[Edward Hirsch]

I feel hate to use the language, but the whole poem is liminal. Like, the whole poem is moving between spaces. Like, where is he coming from with the bed? And he's pushing it through New York, and you see it, and then it's what he wants to happen, where he wants to arrive. And then the feeling is, with a restfulness at the end that he finally does Fall asleep. Waking up dazed, hungry. He's made it. Garbage is like a reminder of what the world is like out in New York City in the morning. But also the coffee is like something promising.

[Kevin Young]

Yes, right. It's a real reminder that even something that's simple as this kind of repetition, that's what the poem can be. It can be your wishes, your dreams, and just naming the thing that you want, and there's always that yearning.

[Edward Hirsch]

I think it's very simple anaphoric repetition, but it's got this incredible thing driving it, and that's what I think is, in my opinion, one of the great things behind it. And about my favorite poems in the New Yorker anthology, which is the Poems of Lived Experience. And that even though this is a kind of fantasy, it has a life behind it and it's got an emotional life behind it. And so I think that this is one of the reasons we turn to poetry, to get this effective experience that you can't get elsewhere. How would you like, write an essay that describes these feelings? You couldn't do it. The poem has to kind of enact this burden, this journey and this longing.

[Kevin Young]

More from my conversation with Edward Hirsch after the break.

[Edward Hirsch]

I'm Alex Schwartz.

[Nomi Fry]

I'm Nomi Fry.

[Kevin Young]

I'm Vincent Cunningham. And this is Critics at Large, a New Yorker podcast for the culturally curious.

[Edward Hirsch]

Each week we're going to talk about a big idea that's showing up across the cultural landscape, and we'll trace it through all the mediums we books, movies, television, music, art.

[Nomi Fry]

And I always want to talk about celebrity gossip, too, of course. What are you guys excited to cover in the next few months?

[Kevin Young]

There's a new translation of the Iliad that's coming out. Emily Wilson. Really excited to see whether I can read the Iliad again, whether I'm that literate. I mean, the jury is out.

[Edward Hirsch]

I can't wait to hear Adam Driver.

[Nomi Fry]

Go again in an Italian accent in Michael Mann's Ferrari. He can't stop. I mean, and bless him, I can't wait. Molto bene.

[Edward Hirsch]

Molto bene. We hope you'll join us for new episodes each Thursday.

[Kevin Young]

Follow Critics at Large today. Wherever you get podcasts, you really don't.

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[Nomi Fry]

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[Nomi Fry]

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[Kevin Young]

Welcome back.

[Edward Hirsch]

My pleasure.

[Kevin Young]

Now, in our November 25, 1991 issue, the new Yorker published your poem man on a Fire Escape, which you'll read for us in a moment. Do you want to say anything about that? First, can you take us back to sort of when it appeared and any thoughts you have?

[Edward Hirsch]

I mean, first of all, any poem in the New Yorker feels like an event for the poet because you actually see people reading the magazine. Of course, you don't really realize that they're really reading the cartoons.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah, they're looking to the cartoons, they're.

[Edward Hirsch]

Looking at the cartoon. But you can pretend they're reading your poem.

[Kevin Young]

They do both.

[Edward Hirsch]

They do both. They do both. But it felt especially exciting for me because the poem is such a New York poem. It's very much a cityscape. And so it felt so right to me. Dreamt to have it in the New Yorker and then it was so exciting when it appeared there.

[Kevin Young]

Well, let's hear it. Here is Edward Hirsch reading his poem man on a Fire Escape.

[Edward Hirsch]

Man on a Fire Escape. He couldn't remember what propelled him out of the bedroom window onto the fire escape of his fifth floor, walk up on the river so that he could see, as if for the first time, sunset settling down on the day's cityscape and tugboats pulling barges up the river. There were barred windows glaring at him from the other side of the street, while the sun deepened into a smoky flare that scalded the cloud's gold vermilion. It was just an ordinary autumn twilight, the kind he had witnessed often before. But then the day brightened almost unnaturally into a rusting, burnished, purplish red haze. And everything burst into flame. The factories pouring smoke into the sky, the trees and shrubs, the shadows of pedestrians scorched and rushing home. There were storefronts going blind and cars burning on the parkway, and steel girders collapsing into the polluted waves. Even the latticed fretwork of stairs where he was standing, even the first stars climbing out of their sunlit graves were branded and lifted up, consumed by fire. It was like watching the start of Armageddon. Like seeing his mother dipped in flame. And then he closed his eyes. And it was over. Just like that. When he opened them again, the world had reassembled beyond harm. So where had he crossed to? Nowhere. And what had he seen? Nothing. No fog horns called out to each other as if in a dream. And no moon rose over the dark river like a warning, icy, long forgotten, while he turned back to an empty room.

[Kevin Young]

That was man on a Fire Escape by Edward Hirsch. So I'm struck, of course, right away, that this is also a fire escape in your poem. But it has a very different feel. It doesn't have that same escape feel. It feels like it is a kind of entry into almost like an apocalyptic vision. I mean, how did you think about these fire escapes or that particular fire escape in your poem?

[Edward Hirsch]

First of all, I'm very fond of fire escapes in poems, but I'm very fond of this kind of urban scenery. Cause it felt like hadn't been in poetry that much before. I mean, there are a couple of things. Like, think of how much time people who live in cities spend in cities. And then you think of the percentage of poems that are about cities, very small. And then if you think about, say, how much poems have to deal with, say, the subject of work and how much people actually work, you go, all they do is have love, death, and the changing of the seasons. People have jobs.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah, exactly.

[Edward Hirsch]

So I like the scene and I like the. Both the literalness of the unpoetic nature of the fire escape, but then the sort of metaphor that's built into it, which is trying to escape from fire.

[Kevin Young]

Right, right.

[Edward Hirsch]

And again, it's in this space between being outside and being inside. You're right between. You're not totally outside, you're not on the street, but you're not in the house either. And so you're in the space of witness, I guess. And that's what the speaker does. He just looks out. It sees something in the city.

[Kevin Young]

Well, in his twilight, another limnal, as we said earlier, space and time. It was just an ordinary autumn twilight, the kind he had witnessed often before. But then the day brightened almost unnaturally. And this kind of burning branded thing. And all these kind of images of. Kind of resurrection, but also of death. So I'm just mostly admiring it. But I also wonder if there's anything else you can tell us about it.

[Edward Hirsch]

I like the idea of something that seems ordinary as the springboard towards something that's extraordinary. Poems that begin in the quotidian and then try to move to another realm.

[Kevin Young]

Sure.

[Edward Hirsch]

The idea for my poem, aside from the landscape of it and the description of it, was I'd read apocalyptic poems by, say, Yeats. I'd never read an apocalyptic poem where you sort of see it and take it back.

[Kevin Young]

I love that part about it.

[Edward Hirsch]

I think that's the thing about the poem. On one hand, it's an ordinary twilight. And I love the description of trying to describe an ordinary twilight, which is a magical time of day, between day and night. But then the vision of something that is very extreme. It is an apocalyptic vision of the world being destroyed. But it's a vision. It's like looking into it and seeing this. And then it disappears and the experience goes. So it's sort of bracketed by. But then, as you know from the logic of that. And then it returns to. And then when the vision is over.

[Kevin Young]

Well, it returns after the mother.

[Edward Hirsch]

Right.

[Kevin Young]

Like seeing his mother dipped in flame.

[Edward Hirsch]

Okay. I just want to say that I shocked myself when I wrote that. I, like, shocked myself. I scared myself. Every once in a while you write something that scares you. That seemed so brutal to me that it scared me and I just stopped. That was like the end.

[Kevin Young]

Wow.

[Edward Hirsch]

And the poem was gonna either end there and it does sort of trail off then.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah. It has ellipses there.

[Edward Hirsch]

It has ellipses there. Cause I didn't feel like I could go beyond that. I, like, shocked myself with that. And then I. I just stopped and decided it's gonna end right there or it's gonna go forward. But instead. And then he closed his eyes and it was over. So it's like the vision has ended. He closes his eyes to sort of move into some other space. And then when he opens them again, he's back in the normal or ordinary world. But he can't quite forget what he just seen.

[Kevin Young]

Well, yes, by then, when those questions are there, one wonders who's asking them and who's answering them so definitively. So where had he crossed to? Nowhere, really. You've kind of crossed and you're changed. And I think there's something wonderful about a poem. And while this doesn't feel exactly like an Ars poetica poem about poetry, There is a kind of declaration about the imagination and its imprinting power. I feel there. So where had he crossed through? Nowhere. And what had he seen? Nothing. But then there's that wonderful thing where. In the negative. It's almost like using negative space to draw. No foghorns called out to each other as if in dream. And no moon rose over the dark river. Like a warning. Well, you know, we have a warning and some foghorns right there. Even though they're not supposed to be.

[Edward Hirsch]

You're so on to me. You're so on to me. You totally get what it's about. Like, you say there's no moon, but you've just evoked the moon. You've said there's no foghorns, but you've just evoked the foghorns. You say there's no warning, but you feel the warning. And then there's a kind of, I guess a pun on nowhere. Pun on nothing. Like he didn't really see anything because it was a vision. But then he also. What was the vision of?

[Kevin Young]

Nothingness.

[Edward Hirsch]

Nothingness. Where did he go on? Nowhere. What was the vision of Nowhereness. So I think it sort of is meant to work. But you're right, the question's like, who's asking him? I don't know the answer to that. It was like, I guess he's asking himself or the speaker, the poet is asking him. It's really not clear exactly.

[Kevin Young]

Well, there's an element of trying to convince oneself.

[Edward Hirsch]

Yeah.

[Kevin Young]

But also I'm struck by what you just kind of indicated, which is there's a narrator. It's third person. And I don't think it could have worked the same if it was first person. It would have felt a little too intimate in a way. There's something distant about even the depth of where the he goes. I'm curious about it. Is it a he as a kind of eye, you think, or he as kind of every person? How does it work? Looking back at the poem now, I.

[Edward Hirsch]

Might have tried it in the first person. Cause it's a first person point of view in a certain way. And it just didn't work at all like. It seemed to, like, make a claim for yourself that it didn't seem right at all. Like I had a vision. No, it just doesn't. It just seemed really wrong. But as soon as I put it in this sort of indifferent third person. I think it's what fiction writers call close third person.

[Kevin Young]

Sure.

[Edward Hirsch]

But I like the sort of anonymity of just any person on a fire escape really looking out. But then what it describes from the third person is something that you could only know about yourself. Like, you couldn't. You couldn't look at someone on the fire escape and say, he's seeing this. It's a very close third person. As if it's first person. Whenever you make this move in a poem, there is something distancing about it, as in a portrait. And I thought for this poem, it was the only way that it worked.

[Kevin Young]

Well, I love that idea of a portrait because it's kind of a self portrait and a portrait maybe in a mirror, almost of kind of this world that you almost imagine beyond the mirror, but also is the mirror. There's something in that that I think is really compelling.

[Edward Hirsch]

I think in those days I was very under the sway of Edward Hopper's urban paintings. And the loneliness in them and the office windows and the feeling of kind of isolation in the city at night. It wouldn't feel right to be in the. You or the first person.

[Kevin Young]

Right. That's well said. And I think if there was any artist I could have had, like, 20 poems of in the anthology, it was Hopper poems. Because he really speaks to poets in a way that I think is really power.

[Edward Hirsch]

The loneliness in it, I think. And the American quality of it.

[Kevin Young]

That's right. We didn't talk about it much, but I do think there's an American quality to this Armageddon. You know, there's something about it that feels both universal but also really specific to the he. But also this moment and, you know, to looking out on a world that feels both changed and unchangeable. You know, there's almost a fate that feels like it's in the poem Guilty.

[Edward Hirsch]

As Charged on this one in terms of. I think the language moves between something vernacular and something more romantic. It's sort of like, you might say, if you were looking historically at American poetry, it, like, starts with Williams and tries to move into Wallace Stevens and then goes back to William Carlos Williams. It's something, you know, bigger and more grand and more romantic. But there is a kind of rootedness in place, I guess. And the place is very Urban. Very much of a cityscape.

[Kevin Young]

Well, I love the epic quality you create in a lyric poem, so thank you for it. I want to ask you a little bit about your forthcoming book, My Childhood in Pieces. It's not a book of poems, but a memoir, and I love the subtitle. You describe it as a stand up comedy, a Skokie elegy. These seem like almost contradictions, but they're not right. Tell us about it.

[Edward Hirsch]

I'm so excited about my book. It all consists of very short pieces, not poetry, but approximate to poetry, I guess.

[Kevin Young]

Got it.

[Edward Hirsch]

Poetry adjacent. Each one has a title and it's two or three lines and they're structured as standup jokes.

[Kevin Young]

Oh, really?

[Edward Hirsch]

I got the idea by writing down things my parents said. So I'll give you the very first one to give you a sense of what the book is like. Conversation with my mother. My mother's standing at the stove stirring a pot of chicken soup. I go, you know, you really shouldn't make fun of me. You're my mother. She said, don't be so sure, kid. So I started writing down things that they said. And then this enabled me to just start telling my story of my childhood with the same kind of tightness, with the same kind of turn. They're not all jokes, but they're all really tight. This way, each one has a turn, as in a poem. So the very first piece is called all sales are final. God is like my old boss on Maxwell Street. My grandfather said, you may get home and discover that your new shirt doesn't have a back, but you're still not going to get a refund. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like that. And this enabled me to tell the story of my childhood. And then as I backed into it, my parents moved. When I was in fifth grade, I guess they moved to Skokie, which is a suburb of Chicago. And the world that I grew up in, I began to realize, is gone. Skokie is still there. But the world that I grew up in, lower middle class Jewish Chicago of the 50s and 60s, just doesn't exist anymore. And that's where the poem starts. The book starts to turn into an elegy.

[Kevin Young]

Well, and you said poem, so.

[Edward Hirsch]

Yeah, yeah, sorry.

[Kevin Young]

You're sneaking in poetry on us too, all the time. I love that.

[Edward Hirsch]

Can't help myself. Can't help myself.

[Kevin Young]

So it's an elegy not just for a childhood, but for a place.

[Edward Hirsch]

That's what I feel. That's what happened. It started out as stand up comedy. And then it also had this elegiac quality. And we decided that we should tag it both ways because the stand up comedy is not entirely accurate, but the elegy part is not exactly accurate either. And so it really tries to be both things.

[Kevin Young]

Well, I think you put your finger on something about humor that is true, I think, in poetry, too. And we talked about this with Stern a little bit. Sometimes it's very dark, the humor. And also culturally, I think there's a kind of dark humor of survival. I assume that you're also working.

[Edward Hirsch]

You and I share this. I mean, our cultures share this, but. Yes, exactly. The jokes are, like, hard. The jokes are tough, but they're funny.

[Kevin Young]

A shirt without a back.

[Edward Hirsch]

I mean, shirt without a back. Or here's one from my grandmother. If I had a brain sale, I'd charge the most for yours. Why? Because I'm the smartest one in the family? No, because yours have never been used.

[Kevin Young]

Ouch. Yeah, that's a tough one.

[Edward Hirsch]

It's all ouch. And then what this does is that I then move into anecdotes to telling stories that have the same kind of quality of commentary by my parents. And then my grandmother. And then I just began to use the mode. I really liked the mode. I began to use the mode to tell my own story.

[Kevin Young]

Well, and I love this idea. You said, you know, the turn in a poem and the turn in a joke. And I think of, you know, culturally, the turn in the blues say, you know, I think all of these things are so fascinating and important. And, you know, looking back at the poems we looked at, you know, what I love about Stern is he almost doesn't have a turn. Like the joke, if you will, is that there is no turn. I'm just gonna want this. And maybe at the end there's that turn of sort of waking. And in yours, it's that moment that you pushed past in the writing where it trails off. But then there's this turn, but it's not a full turn. It's not something somewhere else, even though it says it is.

[Edward Hirsch]

I agree. The Sterne poem doesn't have one, in my opinion. It's a relentless sort of push, but it's a short poem. But first of all, I love your comparison to the blues, because I think the blues have something in common with the sonnet. They have this, what the Italians call the volta. They have a turn, line, line, turn, line, line, turn. That's the blues stanza. And I think that's the structure of the joke too. Like something unexpected and inevitable. It doesn't seem likely. You don't see it coming, but then when it turns, it feels like it hits you right, like it's accurate. And the fact that I was telling stories from my childhood and they were landing this way felt like this was enabling me to tell a story that I just hadn't been able to tell before.

[Kevin Young]

Eddie, thanks so much for talking with me today.

[Edward Hirsch]

It's a thrill. Thanks for having me, Kevin.

[Kevin Young]

Man on a Fire Escape by Edward Hirsch, as well as Gerald Stern's 96 Van Damme, can be found on newyorker.com, as well as the anthology A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker, 1925-2025. Gerald Stern's last collection was Blessed as We Were. Edward Hirsch's forthcoming book is My Childhood in Pieces.

[Nomi Fry]

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 new yorker.com and the New Yorker app, available from the App Store or from Google Play. The theme music is the Corner by Chief Zion Otunde Adjua, courtesy of Stretch Music and Rope a Dope. The New Yorker Poetry Podcast is produced by Chloe Prosinos with help from Hannah Eisenman. Hi, I'm Debra Treisman, fiction editor of the New Yorker. Each week on the Writer's Voice podcast, New Yorker fiction writers read their newly published stories from the magazine. You can hear from authors like Colson Whitehead.

[Edward Hirsch]

Turner nudged Elwood, who had a look of horror on his face. They saw it. Griff wasn't going down. He was going to go for it no matter what happened after.

[Nomi Fry]

Or Joy Williams, her father, was silent. Slowly he passed his hand over his hair. This usually meant that he was traveling to a place immune to her presence, a place that indeed contradicted her presence. She might as well go to lunch, 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.

[Edward Hirsch]

From PRX.