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A
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B
Hi, you're listening to the New Yorker Poetry Podcast. I'm Kevin Young, poetry editor of the New Yorker Magaz. On this program, we invite a poet to select 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 in this episode also appear in the anthology A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker, 1925-2025, available for purchase from the New Yorker store. Wherever you buy books today, my guest is Henri Cole. He's the author of many poetry collections, including the Other Love, as well as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of honors including the Tom Gunn Award and the Jackson Poetry Prize. Welcome Henri, thanks for joining me.
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C
Thank you.
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B
So the first poem you've chosen to read is Vita Nova by Louise Glick. What was it about this particular poem that caught your attention when you were looking through the anthology?
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C
Well, I was impressed that this poem, which comes from the mid-90s, I was impressed that it seems to track between the present memory and dreamscape. And I find it, you know, sentence by sentence, a perfectly accessible poem, but then in a total way, kind of difficult. So I like that it was both those things, and I was. I guess that's something I'm always trying to do in my own work. And so I was trying to figure that out. Also in the 90s, I taught at Harvard, and for a brief time Louise came and taught there. And this poem is from that time in her life, which is about the same as this time in my life now. So that was interesting to me. I feel like I'm in a Vita Nova. Perhaps so.
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B
Well, let's hear the poem. Here's Henri Cole reading Vita Nova by Louise Klick.
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C
Vita Nova, you saved me. You should remember me. The spring of the year. Young men buying tickets for the ferry, boats, laughter because the air is full of apple blossoms. When I woke up, I realized I was capable of the same feeling. I remember. Sounds like that from my childhood. Laughter for no cause, simply because the world is beautiful. Something like that. Lugano tables under the apple trees, deckhands raising and lowering the colored flags. And by the lake's edge, a young man throws his hat into the water. Perhaps his sweetheart has accepted him. Crucial sounds or gestures like a track laid down before the larger themes and then unused, buried islands in the distance. My mother holding out a plate of little cakes, as far as I remember, changed in no detail. The moment, vivid intact, having never been exposed to light. So that I woke elated at my age, hungry for life, utterly confident by the table's patches of new grass, the pale green pierced into the dark existing ground. Surely spring has been returned to me this time not as a lover but a messenger of death. Yet it is still spring. It is still meant tenderly.
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B
That was Vita Nova by Louise Glick, which was originally published in the July 6, 1998 issue of the New Yorker. I loved hearing you read that. It's so delicate on the one hand, and then also has this kind of rushing quality, I feel, especially in those stanzas of what I think of as memory. My mother holding out a plate of little cakes. And this idea of the moment, vivid intact, having never been exposed to light. You mentioned memory and this sort of layering. How do you think it happens there? It's so mysterious, as you indicated.
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C
Yes. I guess I was reading those as the dream that the waking sleeper has had. But they could very much be a memory. There's this dream of remembered childhood. So it is a dream of a.
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B
Memory, I guess A dream of a memory. Yeah.
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C
So that's interesting itself. But that's what precipitates the sense of the possibility of the Vita Nova or the new life for the middle aged poet after. At the end of a marriage, I take it to be. One question I keep asking myself is about the first line. The you is so curious to me.
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B
Absolutely.
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C
I think you could read the you or I read the you. You know, it could be the ex beloved, it could be spring, it could be the new life, it could be all those things.
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B
Also the mother. The mother kind of creeps in there for me a little bit like. Certainly a kind of tending to like you say me, you should remember me. Which is both a. Like you should remember me, but you don't. But also like, of course you should remember me. There's a real tension in it to me.
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C
Yes. Also those words, you saved me. You all stressed words, you know, really is so emphatic, you know.
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B
Right, right.
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C
That it's very striking as a. You know, it begins sort of with an attack, you might say the po.
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B
In.
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C
In the way that a Hopkins poem might begin.
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B
Sure. Or a kind of plea, almost like. Which can be an attack as well, but a kind of like wish or prayer or something like that. And this idea of someone saving, of course, comes to mind, brings to mind, I should say, some of those ideas of prayer and save being saved. At least from the traditions I come from.
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C
Yes. There's another poem. So this poem comes from a book called Vita Nova, which has poem in it. This is the first poem in the book. And the last poem in the book is also called Vita Nova. And that's sort of a. I don't know, like a marriage, unhappy marriage poem. But there's a poem right before Vita Nova, I think it is, that also begins with that line, you saved me, you should remember me. Which is interesting, you know, that. That makes that line, I think, readable in numerous ways.
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B
That's right.
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C
It frees the reader a little bit to consider it.
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B
Well, what of Dante, who of course had his own wonderful book. It's one of my favorites, called Vita Nuova, La Vita Nuova, about his love for Beatrice and its prose and poetry. I think it's such A interesting, almost prologue to the Divine Comedy. How do you see Dante floating through or coursing through here?
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C
Well, I think the idea of the title is really the principal connection, as I recall. That's a. I haven't read that. But as I recall, that's a book that. It's a hybrid book of prose and poetry. Is that right?
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B
Yes, yes, yes.
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C
But in the sense that it deals with. I mean, that's sort of a love poem, you could say. And this is sort of a life poem, you know, A love life poem.
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B
That's right.
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C
I'll pray, you know, the marriage.
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B
But interesting.
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C
She does, of course, have that other book called Averno, which is in that same vernacular of, you know, the access to the underworld.
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B
Well, I see it in the second line, the spring of the year, young men buying tickets for the ferryboats. And whenever I hear a ferryboat, I start to think of Dante and Dante seeing, you know, the dead being ferried across and he himself traveling with them, and this idea of sort of the ferryman and. But also of return and spring and return and, you know, the myths of spring as being a return and return from the underworld, the world of the dead, if you will. There's something too there about myth that I think Glick is very interested in. How do you see her approach to myth, either in general or more specifically in this poem, this new grass, the memory, the islands, the crucial sounds or gestures, like a track laid down before the larger themes and then unused, buried. I mean, that's amazing to be able to have that in the midst of a poem that, as you sort of indicated, has, you know, right before that is these deck hands and this real sense of place and then a real sense of, at least to me, myth. How do you read that?
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C
Well, I love that moment in the poem that seems to me the. I don't know, it's like a volta. It's a moment of exposition which I think most poems can bear very little of. But, you know, the eye goes right there because it is. It's a non narrative line. I love the way the beginning of the poem in the setting up the situation and the memory. I love how there are these full end stop lines, which gives it, in a way, it gives it the quality of myth because there's an absoluteness about each statement, each utterance that feels complete in some way. It's hard to describe the effect of that, but I think that's a risky thing to do. But I think that also gives the reader. It sort of enacts the new life sensation of speaking in full, complete lines that is each a statement of exposition that embodies the truth.
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B
That's right. I love how you put that. I also think it loves to not undermine, but sort of change direction, laughter for no cause, simply because the world is beautiful. Something like that. You have that moment of beauty and then you have that. Well, I'm not totally sure if beauty is there. And that is part of the newness too, if you will. It's part of this notion of. Of unsurity. But also this idea of what I think is she's moving toward in this poem, which is feeling, but also observing a feeling, also sort of questioning feeling. When I woke up, I realized I was capable of the same feeling, which isn't the same thing as having the same feeling or having laughter. It's far from it, in a way.
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C
Yes, I agree with you. There's also this connection to the child experience. You know, the adult is trying to restore the wonderful sense of awe that is remembered in the child mother presences. In the poem with those little cakes.
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B
There'S a kind of Persephone myth, though, in Demeter almost. These little cakes, this underworld returning. It strikes me these kinds of questions that I think course through others of Glick's poems which think about myth but also think about family and the myth of family and the. Let's call them the disappointments, the difficulties, the tensions. Something like that. For me, circles this as well.
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C
Yes, well, there are other. In this book, Vita Nova, there are retellings, I guess you could call them, of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth and others. And then there's that line, this time not as a lover, but a messenger of death. Yet it is still spring. So that while the poem is written in a moment of spring and new life, it is. How to say it? It's aware of time and the passing of time and of mortality and maybe connection across death even. It's a strange thing to say, Kevin, but I still feel very much like Louise is sleeping very nearby us. I feel like she's not far away.
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B
And how do you. I know you guys were close. How do you remember her? How do you think of her?
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C
Well, aesthetically, I think she was a model of the idea of the poem as a shell placed to the ear with a single message for a single listener. To me, that's the most pure experience of the lyric poem. And, gosh, that's the kind of poet I aspire to be. So for me, she was a model, you know, of the solitary human voice speaking lamentation and longing, you might say. I miss her an awful lot.
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B
Well, it's beautifully put. Were you in touch with her after she won the Nobel, which I think wasn't the easiest thing for her?
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C
Yes. She really relished her friendships, and she was so afraid, I think, that the award would change the dynamic of her relations, and she managed to keep that from happening. I think it was very difficult. The prize I had the honor, you know, when the medal was presented to her, she invited me to come and stand up on it was during COVID and it was in her backyard and it had snowed. And so she was presented with the medal in the snowscape of her backyard in Cambridge. And I stood and made a little video of it from up in the up on the top terrace of the triple decker where she lived. And that was an amazing experience. I have to say. I felt really honored by her friendship.
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B
Well, so beautifully put, and thank you for sharing that with us. More from my conversation with Henri Cole after the break.
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A
If you're a reader or even an aspirational reader, I hope you'll join us on Critics at Large from the New Yorker. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here.
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B
And because we're culture critics, we just love to go back to the text.
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A
Yes.
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D
So if books are for you, Critics.
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A
At Large just might be for you as well. Join us on Critics at Large from the New Yorker every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.
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B
Henri, welcome back.
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C
Thank you.
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B
Now, in our June 20, 2022 issue, the new Yorker published your poem Figs, which you'll read for us in a moment. Did you want to tell us anything about the poem first, anything you want readers to know before hearing?
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C
Well, I ate some figs this morning and I thought about this poem. You know, I had some figs sitting on the counter in my place in Claremont, and that's all. They're just a big part of Southern California life.
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B
Here's Henri Cole reading his poem Figs.
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C
Figs. Overnight the figs got moldy and look like little brains or IDS without structure that say something dark about our species, not really laying down a garden, but living out the violent myths. An insect chorus, almost diaphanous, in a neighbor's yard says something, too. America began in tall ships that glowed from within. But for the wretched it still wretchedeth every day as the bright day goes around the sun. Why do our days grow more aggressive and difficult? Why do the world's shadows come so close as its wonders beckon.
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B
That was Figs by Henri Cole. I love hearing that. And it goes so far, it journeys far in such a short, shortish poem. How did that come about, that sense of myth that you mention out loud, you say, but living out the violent myths. An insect chorus, almost diaphanous, in a neighbor's yard, says something, too. And then this wonderful declaration. America began in tall ships that glowed from within. But for the wretched, it's still wretched every day. I just love that evocation and that willingness in such a short space to bring us this other set of voices. How do you think of those different voices that come into this poem?
- [19:55]
C
Well, I think the poem conflates both that very pure lyric voice I was speaking of, the very pure autobiographical, descriptive voice with a public dimension, which I feel is one of the functions of the lyric poem. You know, my poems mostly look inward and present the self in a snapshot of being. But occasionally I like to flip the camera and to observe the world around me. I'm not a stadium poet. I'm a lyric poet. But still, I like to think I can speak to the predicament of, you know, humans. And I don't know why. I like. You know, when I teach, I ask my students to try and change the register of speech in their poems. You know, to speak in the vernacular, but to try and have a moment that either goes low or goes high. And that's what I was trying to do here. I couldn't remember where I got that from. I actually googled America began in tall ships to see, make sure it was original. And the AI said America did not begin in tall ships.
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B
So much for AI Yeah, but I.
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C
Think I remembered a poem from my 20s that I read, a beautiful poem by a poet I loved that began, America began in houses. So I think I might have been playing with that line.
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B
Well, and even the wretched, if, you know, that's such a great coinage or extension. And it feels like you, I think, wanted. It feels mythic and a different register, obviously, but so is the end. I love the ending. Why do our days grow more aggressive and difficult? Why do the world's shadows come so close as its wonders beckon? And all those W, those O sounds, close, shadow grow. But then the almost opposite wonder is the kind of world. Why, I love that sonic map that you've created there.
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C
Thank you. Thank you very much, Kevin. I was. You know, I'm teaching a course this term called the Art of the Sonnet. And last week we were doing Frost, and we were doing that very famous poem of his, a very magnificent poem of his called Design. And it, you know, I noticed that poem ends with two questions. It is what? And then what what? But design of darkness to appall. And I thought, oh, my goodness, that must be like a sonnet trick to end with, you know, his poem, too, had an octave of description. And then just. That was two questions, you know, longer lines. And I thought, oh, gosh, that must be a sonnet trick. I've got to be careful not to, you know, I can't do that again.
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B
Can you teach us some more sonnet tricks? Because I'm always looking for new ones.
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C
Well, another one is ending with a statement of exposition. He does that quite a bit, too. And I've done that myself. But, you know, I mean, the poem isn't rhymed and it isn't metered. But in my sonnets, I do try, and I don't want them to track linearly, you might say. I want them. I want them to have, like, switchbacks on a trail. I want them to have jump cuts, you might say, or film, you know. And that's what, you know, this has. Has at least two of those. So I make myself get up from the poem and often do something else. Read the paper, cook a soup or something, just so when I sit down, I'm out of the linear mode.
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B
Well, and why figs, do you think, besides being in Southern California? I mean, they have this kind of mythic quality for me, at least. But my grandparents grew them in Louisiana, so they were like a fruit I knew or a food I knew from. I don't remember not knowing them. So is that something for you, too? Is it primal for you?
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C
Yes. I mean, I think of them as a symbol of fertility and abundance. I mean, certainly, I think that's the way we should think of them. But as they wrought, I began to think of the Freudian idea of the ID and, you know, all that kind of cauldron of excitations that the id.
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B
You know, and it's ID without structure. It isn't even, you know, like a little bit of id. It's a lot of ID right there.
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C
Yeah. Our days are full of ID right now, Kevin. But hopefully the. I don't know, the pure composure of 14 lines can modulate that ID factor a little bit in our day.
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B
You.
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C
Know, the word sonnet, so is sound, and sonetto is little sound. And this poem makes a little sound, and I'm not looking to be monumental I'm looking to do something very human scale here.
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B
Well, I love how you've done it. I also think it has such a big echo, you know, And I think that's what I love about sonnets, is they're able in such a short space. Is it Frost who called it the narrow room? Is that right? That it's able to kind of, you know, take over and, you know, you echo all the way out to America and the world and the world's shadows. I mean, that's really profound to get in. 14 lines.
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C
Thank you. Thank you, Kevin. I think of it kind of organically as a really deep inhale and then an exhale. And I think that's part of why so many of us are drawn to them, is because of that organic, breathing nature that is connected to them. This is a poem in my book, the Other Love. I don't think I mentioned that, which came out in July.
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B
And tell us more about that.
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C
The title, the Other Love, is meant to. I think some people might think it's perhaps gay love, or I was really just thinking of the love of oneself, acceptance of oneself, rather than the idea of being complete by connection with another. This poem is in the first section of the book, which are all 14 liners. And they do all kind of have a more public dimension. This poem was written, you know, about six years ago. It's funny how current it seems, but it was written in a time not unlike these.
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B
Well, it's interesting. Cause I always think of poems, the best poems at least, being prescient in that way and also being timeless. I mean, they have to say something that has that echo. And then some of the echo is across time. And we're talking about Dante hundreds of years later, you know. And so that kind of quality of perception, prescient qualities. But also, I think, of power in the moment. I would think of it as being present, I think, is really what works here. But also, I think, in the best of poems.
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C
Well, thank you. Thank you very much. You know, I was thinking about how to talk about this poem. I was remembering the old Auden poem des Beaux Arts, you know, where it's the similar idea that while catastrophe is happening, you know, we see Icarus, little legs in the ocean, that he's fallen from the sky. Simultaneously, we see the man plowing on the hillside. And that paradox is timeless.
- [27:59]
B
Right, right. What about the beloved in a sonnet? Do you think they all have beloveds? And if so, is there one here?
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C
Oh, gosh, that's an interesting question. I don't think there is one here. Maybe my love of figs. Maybe. But in that sense, ID without structure, after all, my love of fertility and abundance. But no, I think certainly love is one of the subjects of the sonnet. My goodness. Its origin is in the sense of Petrarch and Shakespeare. I mean, that's the subject. And I certainly have written my share of those. But I think this is trying to be a little more ethical or something. It's trying not to be about me in a way.
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B
Yeah. Will you tell us a little bit about the rest of the other love, the rest of the book?
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C
Oh, well, thank you for asking. The last part of the book is a kind of homage section, and there are poems of homage to Heaney and Meryl and conversation with Eliot. So they're poems of kind of aesthetic statement and homage, I guess, really I had the opportunity to go back and visit the grave of Heaney, who was my colleague and I think probably your teacher as well.
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B
He was, yes.
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C
And, well, I think in terms of the sonnet, you know, when I was a young man, it was really Heaney and Meryl who were writing the sonnets of that moment. And in that sense I owed them respect.
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B
Well, and we were lucky to have them and we're lucky to have you with us today, talking and remembering and to have your wonderful poem. So thank you so much, Henri.
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C
Thank you for the work you're doing. Thank you.
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B
Appreciate it. Figs by Henri Cole, as well as Louise Glick's Vita Nova, can be found on new yorker.com and in the anthology A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker, 1925-2025, out now. Louise Glick's last book of poems was Winter Recipes from the Collective. Henri Cole's latest collection is the Other Love.
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D
To Listen to New Poetry from the New Yorker, as well as narrated fiction, reporting, criticism and more. Download the New Yorker app for more New Yorker literary audio, try the New Yorker Fiction Podcast or the Writer's Voice, which presents new fiction read by the author. You can find those and other New Yorker podcasts by searching for the New Yorker in your podcast app. Let us know what you think of this podcast by rating and reviewing it in your podcast app, and please follow the show so that you don't miss new episodes. The New Yorker Poetry Podcast is produced by John Lamay with help from Hannah Eisenman. The theme music is the Corner by Chief Zion Atunde Ad courtesy of Stretch Music and Ropidot. Thanks for listening.
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E
Hi, this is David Remnick and this fall. Join us in celebrating the 100th anniversary of the New Yorker at the New Yorker festival, which returns October 24th through the 26th. We'll be joined by Salman Rushdie, Sarah Jessica Parker, George Saunders, Zadie Smith, Rashid Johnson, Keanu Reeves, Ocean Vuong and many others. Tickets are on sale now, and we'll be announcing more events soon. You can learn more@newyorker.com festival that's newyorker.com festival.
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B
From PRX.