Erika Meitner Reads Philip Levine

Summary

The New Yorker: Poetry Podcast – Episode Summary

Title: Erika Meitner Reads Philip Levine
Host/Author: WNYC Studios and The New Yorker
Release Date: May 21, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of The New Yorker: Poetry, Kevin Young, the poetry editor of The New Yorker, engages in a thoughtful conversation with poet Erika Meitner. The episode features Erika reading Philip Levine's renowned poem "What Work Is" and her own poem "To Gather Together." The discussion delves into the nuances of these works, exploring themes of labor, community, and the human condition, especially in the context of contemporary challenges.

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Discussion of Philip Levine's "What Work Is"

Selection and Personal Connection

Erika Meitner initiates the conversation by introducing Philip Levine's poem "What Work Is." She inquires about what drew Kevin Young to choose this particular piece.

Kevin Young's Reflection:
"So there's so many things about this poem that I love. Back when I was about 15, I bought a used copy... this poem stood out to me as first of all, I didn't know poetry could be so narrative and so accessible." (01:56)

Young highlights his early appreciation for Levine's ability to blend narrative accessibility with deep emotional resonance, particularly the portrayal of working-class struggles and enduring love.

Personal Correspondence with Philip Levine:
Kevin shares a personal anecdote about corresponding with Philip Levine after submitting his own work, emphasizing the mutual respect and influence between poets.
"He ended up writing me a really nice note about my poems... And I still remember he said, you write with so much energy and pluck." (03:54)

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Analysis of "What Work Is"

Narrative and Emotional Complexity:
Erika observes the poem's intricate balance between welcoming tones and underlying tension. She notes how the poem begins with an inclusive "we" but shifts to a directive "you," creating a dynamic tension.
"You don't know what work is. Forget you. I love that kind of mix of bringing in with the we and then turning it on this you who is kind of kicked out of the poem." (07:02)

Themes of Work and Art:
Kevin delves into the themes of the poem, discussing how Levine intertwines the concepts of work and art, suggesting that both require passion and love.
"In this poem, at least, art is work and work is art." (09:16)

Human Connection and Defiance:
The conversation explores how the poem conveys a defiant struggle against oppressive work conditions while also expressing profound familial love.
"But it's clear he's able to tell his brother he loved him indirectly by writing it into the poem." (11:13)

Relatability and Realism:
Kevin appreciates the poem's realistic portrayal of laborious jobs and its refusal to sanitize the harsh realities faced by workers.
"It doesn't iron out either the internal monologue, the anger, or the circumstances, which are something we would think of normally as, like, non poetic." (13:02)

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Erika Meitner's Poem "To Gather Together"

Introduction to the Poem:
Transitioning from Levine's work, Erika introduces her own poem, "To Gather Together," which reflects on the complexities of human connection during the pandemic.

Context and Inspiration:
Kevin shares the personal backdrop of the poem, mentioning his mother's stroke during the pandemic and the broader societal impacts of COVID-19.
"My mother had a stroke during the pandemic... And that was in the spring of 2021." (27:16)

Reading of "To Gather Together":
Erika performs her poem, capturing the fragmented yet yearning essence of post-pandemic reunions and the lingering anxieties about physical closeness.

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Analysis of "To Gather Together"

Exploration of Togetherness and Isolation:
Erika and Kevin discuss how the poem juxtaposes the desire to reconnect with the residual fears instilled by the pandemic.
"There's a kind of shift between the self being a little bit unmoored... and then this you that it feels like is a point of connection." (23:09)

Body and Vulnerability:
The poem delves into bodily presence and the vulnerabilities exposed by the pandemic, emphasizing the challenges of redefining personal space and intimacy.
"Bodies, man. They're complicated and fall apart." (23:47)

Language as Connection:
They explore how language serves as a bridge between individuals trying to articulate their complex emotions and reestablish connections.
"It's the body, it's the self. But there's also this kind of language... trying to describe this particular moment." (25:52)

Apocalyptic and Redemptive Elements:
Kevin relates the poem to broader themes of environmental apocalypse and human resilience, hinting at the redemptive power of human connection amidst chaos.
"I think the redemption comes in the human connection." (37:25)

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Anthology and Broader Reflections

A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker:
The conversation touches on the anthology "A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker, 1925-2025," highlighting how contemporary events like 9/11 and the pandemic are framed within the broader historical context of poetry addressing moments of crisis.

Timeliness and Timelessness in Poetry:
Erika emphasizes that effective poetry captures the immediacy of the present while resonating with universal, timeless themes.
"The best poems do that. They have to be both timely and timeless." (34:00)

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with reflections on the transformative power of poetry in articulating personal and collective experiences. Erika Meitner and Kevin Young underscore the essential role of poets in navigating and expressing the complexities of contemporary life, especially during tumultuous times like the pandemic.

Final Thoughts:
"I think that's where we find the redemption." (37:06)

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Where to Listen and Further Reading

Both "What Work Is" by Philip Levine and "To Gather Together" by Erika Meitner are available on newyorker.com. Additionally, these poems are featured in the anthology A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker, 1925-2025, available at the New Yorker Store and major book retailers.

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Notable Quotes:

• "I didn't know poetry could be so narrative and so accessible." — Kevin Young (01:56)
• "Art is work and work is art." — Kevin Young (09:16)
• "Bodies, man. They're complicated and fall apart." — Erika Meitner (23:47)
• "I think the redemption comes in the human connection." — Kevin Young (37:25)

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This episode offers a profound exploration of how poetry serves as a medium for expressing and understanding the multifaceted experiences of work, community, and personal relationships, particularly in challenging times.

Transcript

[Kevin Young]

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[Erika Meitner]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported by Sony Pictures Classics. Presenting Jane Austen Wrecked My Life starring Camille Rutherford, A new romantic comedy about a Parisian woman who dreams of becoming a successful writer and experiencing true love while attending a Jane Austen writer's residency in England. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life opens only in theaters select cities May 23rd and nationwide May 30th. For more information and tickets, visit janeaustenreckedmylife.com.

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. The poems we're featuring today also appear in the anthology A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker, 1925-2025, available for purchase from the New Yorker Store or wherever you buy books today. My guest is Erika Meitner, whose books include Useful Junk and Holy Moly Carry Me, which won the 2018 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry. She's currently a Mandel Institute Cultural Leadership Program Fellow and she's the director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Erika, welcome. Thank you for joining me.

[Kevin Young]

Thanks for having me, Kevin.

[Erika Meitner]

Now, the first poem you've chosen to read is what Work Is by Philip Levine. What was it about this poem that caught your eye?

[Kevin Young]

So there's so many things about this poem that I love. Back when I was about 15, I bought a used copy for 25 cents of a Poulin Jr. S Contemporary American Poetry from a library sale. And in reading through the poems in that anthology, which was one of the first times I encountered living poets, this poem stood out to me as first of all, I didn't know poetry could be so narrative and so accessible. And so there's something about this poem. It has hidden complexities, but it's really easy to access and it has a particular kind of working class anger that I really love about it. Philavene, in some ways I feel like is, you know, I didn't know him personally, but he feels sort of like a a poetry forebearer for me or somebody who opened up permission for me to be able to write in a more narrative way, in a more straightforward way, in an accessible way. And so this poem really speaks to me for that reason and for its anger, for its ability to hold anger in a really particular kind of way and direct it in various ways, and also its ability to hold love, overwhelming love. The other sort of weird thing is that I work in documentary poetic modes also, and my first big documentary poetry project was a project on Detroit in about 2007 through 09, so right before and during bankruptcy, and I was sent on commission by Virginia Quarterly Review to report on the city in verse with a photographer and a radio journalist. And I ended up sending that project to Phil Levine. And he wrote back to me. And I still have his note on my shelf. And I still remember he said, you write with so much energy and pluck, pluck.

[Erika Meitner]

That's highly phase.

[Kevin Young]

Right. He ended up writing me a really nice note about my poems when I sent him my whole book. And that became a sort of nice little interesting correspondence.

[Erika Meitner]

Excellent. Well, why don't we hear the poem? Here's Erica Meitner reading what Work Is, by Philip Levine.

[Kevin Young]

What Work is. We stand in the rain in a long line, waiting at Ford Highland park for work. You know what work is. If you're old enough to read this, you know what work is, although you may not do it, forget you. This is about waiting, shifting from one foot to another, feeling the light rain falling like mist into your hair, blurring your vision, until you think you see your own brother ahead of you, maybe 10 places. You rub your glasses with your fingers, and of course it's someone else's brother, narrower across the shoulders than yours, but with the same sad slouch, the grin that does not hide the stubbornness, the sad refusal to give in to rain, to the hours wasted waiting, to the knowledge that somewhere ahead a man is waiting who will say, no, we're not hiring today for any reason he wants. You love your brother now suddenly you can hardly stand the love flooding you for your brother who's not beside you or behind or ahead because he's home, trying to sleep off a miserable night shift at Cadillac so he can get up before noon to study his German works, eight hours a night so he can sing Wagner, the opera you hate most, the worst music ever invented. How long has it been since you told him you loved him, held his wide shoulders, opened your eyes wide and said those words and maybe kissed his cheek? You've never done something so simple, so obvious, not because you're too young or Too dumb. Not because you're jealous or even mean or incapable of crying in the presence of another man. No. Just because you don't know what work is.

[Erika Meitner]

That was what Work Is by Philip Levine, which was originally published in the March 12, 1990 issue of the New Yorker. I loved hearing you read that poem. It's so complex. You had talked about its sort of welcoming qualities, but it actually starts with a kind of kiss off, which. With a kind of welcoming you and then saying, you don't know what work is. Forget you. I love that kind of mix of bringing in with the we and then turning it on this you who is kind of kicked out of the poem. The rest of the poem proceeds without the you, though, of course, the you kind of continues and becomes almost an I. What do you make of that, like, kind of forget you? That starts the poem off.

[Kevin Young]

I'm so interested in that moment, the forget you because it kicks the reader out of the poem. Like, if you re enter the poem after that as a reader, it's because you're kind of okay with that anger of the poet, saying, like, this isn't for you. And you're like, okay, but I'm gonna keep reading. It's so interesting. When I was rereading this poem, which I hadn't read in a while, I had remembered the forget you, but then I totally had forgotten that it's not in first person that there is this remove of the second person. And it struck me as really integral to the poem by the time you get to the end. Because the inner narrative in here, it's about work, but it's about art making. It's about passion. It's about, you know, money, job versus vocation.

[Erika Meitner]

Wow, I love that.

[Kevin Young]

And that was something I realized by the end that. That you, Phil Levine, was implicating himself in kicking that you out of the poem in some way with that ending of the poem.

[Erika Meitner]

Hmm. With the end where he says, you've never done something so simple, so obvious. Not because you're too young or too dumb, not because you're jealous or even mean or incapable of crying in the presence of another man. No. It almost protests too much. But then it says just because you don't know what work is. And so you think of that you as Levine in some way.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah. That he's implicating himself in saying, I, as an artist, haven't gotten to the place my brother is at right now, practicing German, singing this Wagner like I'm not quite there yet, or doesn't see himself yet. In that version of a working artist. And also hasn't worked the night shift at Cadillac. Like, it's kind of like both in some ways.

[Erika Meitner]

Interesting.

[Kevin Young]

In this poem, at least, art is work and work is art.

[Erika Meitner]

Yeah.

[Kevin Young]

And there's not. There's no inspiration in this poem.

[Erika Meitner]

Interesting. Well, don't you think also waiting is an art, he's saying, and if you don't know it, you've lost something, you've missed something. And I think there isn't enough poetry that tells us, hey, you're missing out. You know, often we're, like, including people in our poems. And in a way, this poem is saying, actually, you can't catch up. Like, you either know this or you don't know this. And this poem isn't for you if you don't know what work is. As he says in the end.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah. As you're speaking, there are two things that occur to me. One is that waiting. It's a skill of mimetic learning. Right. So it's something you learn to do because you do it. Like if you're ever dragged on an errand as a kid to the bank, back when you had to, like, go to the bank in person or wait in a doctor's office. And there's so many other poems about waiting. Galway Kinnell's poem Wait, and I'm thinking of like, in the Waiting Room by Elizabeth Bishop. Like, there's so many older, like, sort of last generation poems about waiting because it was something you had to do with no device.

[Erika Meitner]

Right.

[Kevin Young]

You just had to, like, mimetically learn to wait.

[Erika Meitner]

Well, and you had to learn oneself in those moments in some way, I think he's saying, and I love those other examples, the Bishop and the canal. And there's something about Levine's root realism about the world, which requires also bitterness, anger, things that we don't always allow in poems, maybe, but also this humor that I think gets you through. And that way it kind of isn't quite the blues you hum while you're waiting, but it has that kind of quality of tears and kisses and affection and defiance. And maybe that's what I land on in the end. There's a kind of defiance throughout the poem.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah. And I think what you said about having to confront the self when you are waiting is what happens to him in this welling up of emotion that he's never going to express but expresses in the poem. Like, he's able to tell his brother he loved him indirectly by writing it into the poem. But it's clear Isn't able to do that in person.

[Erika Meitner]

Well, I guess the question is this. You makes it also. Have you, you know, has the reader done that? When's the last time you did that? And he's suggesting almost that this is another kind of work that we have to do, that this emotional work. An overused phrase, perhaps, but I think a useful one in this poem. The work of trying to say how you feel. And that's what I admire about the poem ultimately, is he's suggesting that it also comes down to love of each other somehow.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah. And I think giving attention to this kind of working class moment was something up until this poem. I hadn't seen a whole lot of poems that talked about work in this particular way. One of the things I ended up doing when I was in Detroit interviewing people is I interviewed Lolita Hernandez, who is the very first woman to work on the Cadillac line in Detroit. And she was amazing. And while I was interviewing her, I was thinking of this poem in my head. But Philavene obviously went on to not be an auto worker.

[Erika Meitner]

Right.

[Kevin Young]

And this poem reminds me of not only of every terrible job I've ever had, but also that I should call my sister and tell her that I love her.

[Erika Meitner]

Right.

[Kevin Young]

And so I think in that way, the choose your own adventure kind of you that also speaks directly to the reader becomes a kind of call to action. But also, as the reader, I found myself getting defensive. Right. You don't know what work is. So I immediately thought of every, like, shitty job I've ever had.

[Erika Meitner]

Right. You start listing them in your head.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah. And I'm really kind of, you know, as a poet who includes things like Walmart in my work or other things that for years I kept thinking I couldn't write about, like the local strip mall because it wasn't poetic. I appreciate this poem so much. And I think this is part of the reason I gravitated towards it again for this was because it doesn't iron out either the internal monologue, the anger, or the circumstances, which are something we would think of normally as, like, non poetic.

[Erika Meitner]

I love how you put that. I also want to ask you about the poetic and the non poetic. Is that something you think about? Because I think in your work, which we'll turn to in a minute, you often are thinking about, as you said, not just the local strip mall or something, but also thinking about current events and topics. I wonder if you give us a little insight into how you approach that.

[Kevin Young]

You know, it's interesting. I'm always really drawn towards poets who let the world into their work in every possible way. And I think one of the revelations of doing this documentary poetry project I was talking about earlier in Detroit was, you know, at that time, a lot of photographers were going down to Detroit to photograph the quote, unquote, ruins of Detroit to the point where they started coming up with a name for it. They called it ruin Porn. And there was a lot of criticism by Detroit residents of the ways in which photographers were framing their photos to make it seem like Detroit was only a decrepit place in decline, that there was no life there. And I had this kind of poetic revelation when I went down to look at Cass Tech High School, which they were literally dissembling at that point, both brick by brick and then demolishing. And it's a very famous high school. Like, Diana Ross went there. Like, all these famous musicians and cultural icons went there. And if you panned your camera over about 50ft, you would see the new, like, $20 million Cass Tech high School directly next to the ruins of the old one. But no one widened their frame that much. And I kept thinking about this concept of, like, what do we leave out of the frame poetically? Because when I'm having a revelation or in a moment of crisis, it's not like on a scenic mountaintop. I'm, like, in my car in the strip mall that has the Old Navy, the Marshalls, and the Bed, Bath and Beyond. That's the same strip mall you've had in any place you've ever lived. And those things weren't in my poems. And I started putting them back in in the same way that Philaveen has the people waiting online for someone to mercurially decide whether or not they get work that day.

[Erika Meitner]

More from my conversation with Erica Meitner after the.

[Kevin Young]

Hi, I'm Susan Glaser.

[Erika Meitner]

I'm Jane Mayer.

And I'm Evan Osnos.

And we host the Washington Roundtable from.

The New Yorker's Political Scene podcast.

[Kevin Young]

For me, this is the water cooler. This is a wonderful chance to sit down with two of the smartest colleagues in the country and, you know, just kind of compare notes.

[Erika Meitner]

Now, that's so true, because, first of all, we are actually friends in real life.

[Kevin Young]

We.

[Erika Meitner]

But I can't wait till Fridays to hear what you guys think. Everybody sees the headlines, but you guys fill in the gaps.

I also think, though, occasionally we get somebody to come on, and I'm always smarter for it. If you get a great historian who can tell you about a presidential election 50, 60 years ago. Often it can help you understand about what's happening today.

[Kevin Young]

So if you're looking for weekly insights.

[Erika Meitner]

Into what's going on inside the Beltway.

[Kevin Young]

Please join us every Friday on the Washington Roundtable, part of the New Yorker's Political Scene podcast.

[Jason Adam Katzenstein]

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[Erika Meitner]

Erica, welcome back.

[Kevin Young]

Thanks, Kevin.

[Erika Meitner]

Now, in our October 4, 2021 issue, the New Yorker published your poem To Gather Together, which we'll hear you read in a moment. Do you want to tell us anything about the poem first? Anything that might be helpful for our listeners?

[Kevin Young]

Sure. I wrote this poem in the sort of post vaccination, but still pretty early pandemic where we were like just coming out of lockdown. It must have been 2021 and we were all still trying to figure out kind of how to human again.

[Erika Meitner]

Here's Erica Meitner reading her poem To Gather Together.

[Kevin Young]

To Gather Together. It is not yet after the pandemic, but most of us have bared our faces in public. Most of us are a little haptic, though we remain somewhat wary of strangers merging in enclosures. And what does it mean to gather, to take up from a resting place? We are so tired, we are uncovered and mustering strength. Never mind my mother's post stroke slurred speech and vertigo, her ear crystals misaligned, her neck brace. We are survivors of the panic wars. We are reaching new conclusions intuitively from inferences about hugging. My radar is broken. I'm not sure where to put all my limbs when they're tangled with yours. It's not a problem. Your failing configurations of attention. My bad knees to draw fabric into puckers, pleated pants, rumpled sheets, your fingers hooked in my underpants. And we bring together all the parts of ourselves to embrace, haul in our bodies to harvest like clusters of ripened cherry tomatoes still warm from the sun. Forget the kale stripped bare by bright green cabbage worms congregating on thick stems to summon everyone back to this abundant and skeletal planet. After we've jettisoned the billionaires into space, we celebrate the launch with tiny coops of champagne to throw open the doors and host guests and board packed planes where everyone is cranked and cranky about proximity still. But look at the skyline, clutches of buildings reaching for billows of clouds to assemble in a sequence for binding somewhere past contact, tracing. Gather is a transitive verb.

[Erika Meitner]

That was to gather together. By Erica Meitner well, I love hearing you read this poem and I remember it running in that moment you mentioned, sort of still pandemic, but also maybe a moment of can we get on a plane? Can things open up? What's possible? And I feel like this poem really captures that moment, but also a kind of broader sense of gathering that I think maybe the poem talks about has decayed somewhat. And I love that you also used some of the we and the you that's in the Levine how are you thinking about this we that starts the poem and then this you that. For me hearing it again, it's still a surprise to have this you come that I think feels so intimate and personal.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah, I think the we is an all encompassing we. It's all of us. And I think that was something that was interesting to me during the pandemic, was that everyone had a very different level of comfort in terms of contact, in terms of being in crowds, in terms of eating inside, eating outside, being masked, being not masked. And that we, I think is a collective. It felt very collective to me to try to articulate what that moment is. And it's interesting being so far on the other side of the pandemic, how strange the we feels to me now, even though I was definitely writing a collective that I was included in. And then I was thinking about the you in this poem as you know, the people in your bubble, the people that you are very intimate with or even became too intimate with because you were trapped in the house, only with them.

[Erika Meitner]

Sure. Well, it feels like a beloved, but also a little like it's broken up, this we by these lines which I think are so great and a little bit funny. My radar is broken. I'm not sure where to put all my limbs when they're tangled with yours, it's not a problem. And so there's this kind of shift between the self being a little bit unmoored, the radar being broken, and then this you that it feels like is a point of connection. But then there's your failing configurations of attention. My bad knees. Like, there's still this hollowing out a little bit.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah. Bodies, man. They're complicated and fall apart.

[Erika Meitner]

Well, of course, these are moments where they were threatened very much by. By pandemic. By a worldwide pandemic that we all went through, but all experience, as you point out, in different ways. How do you think about this? All in our bodies? I love that idea.

[Kevin Young]

There was something about. I have a lot of trouble articulating this because it's like, you know, often we write a poem because it articulates the thing we can't articulate when we're talking about it. But there was something about, for me at least, needing to overcome a certain fear to bring your body into community with other bodies. Whether it was getting on a plane at that time or going to the supermarket or other things.

[Erika Meitner]

Sure.

[Kevin Young]

And I think of that sort of like hauling in of your body as like a getting yourself together with, like an internal armor to go out in a certain way.

[Erika Meitner]

I think there's a kind of togetherness, but also, as you've just said, getting yourself together, like the gathering together isn't just us all coming together, but also the self saying, I gotta get it together. There's almost getting it together in there. I love the title for that reason. It kind of has these little slippages. And I think then what's interesting is these twos to draw, to harvest, to summon. Are these possibilities, are these orders, are these what get us there? Or is it like a meditation on these aspects of gathering?

[Kevin Young]

That's a great question. I think of the twos as transitive in a particular way, not as an imperative.

[Erika Meitner]

Right.

[Kevin Young]

But as like things were kind of moving through, if that makes sense.

[Erika Meitner]

Sure. And is that how you see the ending, which I love because you return us to language, which is partially what is being threatened in the end. It's the body, it's the self. But there's also this kind of language that I feel like is trying to describe, as you said, this particular moment that is both unique and also feels elemental.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah. I think I was thinking about us moving into, through and past. This moment of fear. Like contact tracing is so interesting to me because it's a form of gathering, but a terrifying, you know, like you're trying to figure out who you came in contact with to make sure that you haven't given them anything.

[Erika Meitner]

Right. Or vice versa, I suppose.

[Kevin Young]

Yeah. And so, like that. I don't know if you remember in the, like, earlier days of the pandemic, they had an app in certain states.

[Erika Meitner]

Yeah. And it would ding. You'd be sitting at lunch with someone outside, you know, 20ft away, and then their thing would ding, and you're like, oh, three days ago or a week ago. Oh, no. Like, what is happening?

[Kevin Young]

But, yeah, that's another way. It was another way of gathering that was fraught with. It was data gathering. Right. But it connected us all and was fraught with danger. I wrote this poem fairly soon after I had been. So let me back up.

[Erika Meitner]

Sure.

[Kevin Young]

My mother had a stroke during the pandemic, and I wasn't able to see her until I was able to get a vaccination. And that was in the spring of. It must have been in the spring of 2021, like in April or May. I finally was able to get vaccinated and get on a plane and go to New York. And it just struck me when I'd look at the skyline and this was back when the streets of New York were still pretty empty, that the buildings were gathered together and in proximity and crowded in a particular way. When my mother read this poem in the New Yorker, she was really upset with me instead of being proud of me because she said, everyone's gonna think I'm infirm. And that was really distressing to her. And she's recovered from the stroke, luckily. But that was a real kind of feature of my pandemic, of having my mother have this stroke and then not being able to see her or care for her, go help her. And it, I think, informed this poem a lot.

[Erika Meitner]

Yeah, you've covered so much in the poem. And even talking about it, we have the mother's stroke, which I think stands in for a lot of what you're saying. I mean, there's so much loss just outside this poem, thinking about unprecedented death. But then there's also this quality, I think, of the pandemic of that moment. I think people now are starting to look back on it, you know, having done the century of poetry in the New Yorker, I looked back on sort of recent. Recent history and the ways that poets were in the moment, trying to write about the moment. And this poem actually even says that it starts with. It is not yet after the pandemic. So it's still trying in the midst to say it can you tell us about that moment? Now, looking back, does it seem like a moment that you were trying to write about in different ways, or was this your only poem that you felt addressed that Are we all writing in this moment?

[Kevin Young]

You know, it's interesting. I don't actually have a whole lot of other pandemic poems. I have maybe one or two others that might have been because I was desperately trying to work full time and homeschool my children because all the schools were shut for so long by us. But I think now the pandemic poems are starting to come out and be published in book length. But actually, during the pandemic, Rick Barrow published a little chapbook that then became his book, Moving the Bones. And there are these little prose poems, a big chunk of the book, that start out during the pandemic. And all the poems start out that way. And they were the most moving poems Rick was able to articulate. Something about the kind of isolation of the pandemic that I've not been able to, I think, articulate. And it's something that was very moving to me and in part inspired the beginning of this poem.

[Erika Meitner]

Well, I think it really captures something about the we and that sense of to throw open the doors and host guests and board members, packed planes, where everyone is cranked and cranky about proximity still and all those sounds, the p sounds, the cranked and cranky. But look at the skyline, which you mentioned. That kind of moment of suddenly we are on this plane. It feels the soaring quality of the end. You also have this idea of assembling and gathering that I know is something you're thinking about because it titles your forthcoming book, which Milkweed is set to publish next year and is called Assembled Audience. Could you tell us a little bit about Assemblage and the book as a whole?

[Kevin Young]

Yeah. I became really interested in part through writing this poem about the different ways that we assemble, whether it's in prayer, in protest, just on the beach, hanging out, and, you know, in grief and in mourning and in joy. And the title of my next book was actually inspired by a Taren Simon installation of the same name, which is just a dark room and you walk in and it's recordings of people clapping. And if you sit in it long enough, it takes on a sort of joyful quality that then moves to kind of insidiousness. And so I was thinking a lot about the ways we come together, and particularly in the poem, to Gather Together. It was just at the cusp of people I still remember so clearly. People were getting so angry with each other on airplanes in that moment because they were scared. But, like, no one remembered how to human and how to connect. And I'm not saying we're, like, doing a great job of it now, maybe, but there is a particular relearning. And I think anybody who's raised children through the pandemic, through different developmental phases, also has seen how that isolation has impacted them in different ways.

[Erika Meitner]

Absolutely.

[Kevin Young]

And so either your teenagers got really weird, or your little kids, like, shot out of the door like pinballs when they were finally able to play with their friends again. And so I think that was a really formative experience for me in figuring out what happens when we're in community with each other and then when we're not able to be in community with each other.

[Erika Meitner]

Well, and I think some would say we've lost. You know, you say how to human, but how to community, like, how to make connection in a different way. I do think our poems are certainly changed. I'm not sure we know exactly how. And one of the things I was hoping to do with the anthology is at least frame the book through these big, fairly contemporary events from 911 to pandemic. And the poems that bridge that in the anthology, I hope, take us on a little bit of a journey through those contemporary things. And then, you know, the span of the book is 100 years. So you get to see that this isn't the only thing that poetry has thought about in the hundred years. Of course, there's been other moments of crisis, cataclysm. And one of the things I came to understand is the ways that poetry has to talk about now as a way of talking about forever. And I think I knew that. But to see it written up close through a hundred years was really, at least for me, a transformative experience.

[Kevin Young]

I love that, that it has to say that again. I love that so much that it has to.

[Erika Meitner]

It has to talk about now in order to talk about forever. Like, you have to be both timely and timeless. And the best poems do that. Well, how does some of this focus on the contemporary? What life is rather than what work is? How does it make its way into your new book or your most recent work?

[Kevin Young]

Yeah, so my new book, a lot of the poems are about eco apocalypse and environmental destruction. A lot of them have to do with coastal environment. Because I wrote a lot of the book actually, during the pandemic, and my children were home all the time. The only way I was able to get writing down was to go to residencies And I was lucky enough to have a residency at a place called the Hermitage, which is on the coast of Florida, the Gulf coast, in a endangered loggerhead turtle nesting area that's also in the bullseye of hurricanes pretty regularly. So there was beach erosion, there was endangered species, there was red tide, there was constantly enterococcus warnings that would come through the local news media. If you went out to swim, you kind of had to check the forecast. And sometimes it could be the most beautiful place on earth, and other times it could be incredibly weird and toxic feeling, or you're watching the coastline literally erode. And so a lot of that landscape wended its way into the book. And then also I was and still am working on an ongoing documentary poetry project on sea level rise and the built environment in Miami. And so a lot of those poems made it into the book along with some pandemic work. And so in some cases, I framed it in a religious framework, an eschatological framework that I'm used to from Judaism that appears in extra biblical literature. Because it really felt like we were and to some extent are living through a kind of apocalypse.

[Erika Meitner]

Yeah, I was gonna say it sounds apocalyptic in the biggest sense, like a sense of transformation and change, cataclysm, you know?

[Kevin Young]

Yeah. And it's interesting. I was in New York a couple weeks ago and randomly ran into the poet Marie Howe on the street. Like, I recognized her from behind.

[Erika Meitner]

Pulitzer Prize winning poet.

[Kevin Young]

I recognized her from behind her hair, because it's amazing. And she was walking her dog, Jack. And I yelled after her, Marie Howe. And we don't know each other that well, but she had just been at UW Madison in the fall where I teach to do reading. And I started talking to her and I said, marie, I feel like we're in the apocalypse. And she said, no, we're in a period of rebirth and renewal. And I thought, this is the most prophetic interaction I'm going to have all month. And I feel like I hope that she's correct. I hope that she's right. I feel like the Pulitzer cements the fact that she's clearly right.

[Erika Meitner]

Yes, she's clearly right.

[Kevin Young]

But I'm interested in this moment of transformation.

[Erika Meitner]

Sure. And is that in the book or is that part of the structure? Because you have always interesting structures and ways of thinking. It feels like your books are solid moments in time, but also well thought out orchestrated works of art. How do you frame this one?

[Kevin Young]

I'm not sure how redemptive it is. I think the redemption comes in it in the human connection. And that's where I think what work is spoke to me, that moment of human connection between the speaker and his brother, either real and lived or imaginary. And so I think that's where we find the redemption.

[Erika Meitner]

Thanks Erica, for talking with me today.

[Kevin Young]

Thanks for having me, Kevin.

[Erika Meitner]

To Gather Together by Erica Meitner as Well as Philip Levine's what Work Is can be found on newyorker.com and in the anthology A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker, 1925-2025, out now. Philip Levine's last collection of poems was the Last Shift. Erica Meitner's most recent book is useful junk.

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 the New Yorker app, available from the App Store or from Google Play. The theme music is the Corner by Chief Zion Otunde Ojoa, 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 Deborah 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.

[Kevin Young]

Turner nudged Elwood, who had a look.

[Erika Meitner]

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.

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.

[Kevin Young]

From PRX.