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- [00:00]
Jason Adam Katzenstein
Hi, I'm New Yorker cartoonist Jason Adam Katzenstein. I'm a short man with a small business, and that means I spend a lot of time hustling and trying to figure things out on my own. But now I don't need to spend my evenings guessing at tax forms or tracking down onboarding documents. Gusto handles all of that for me so I can spend time doing the thing I actually love, which is cartooning. Gusto is an online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one remote, friendly, and incredibly easy to use, so you can pay, hire onboard, and support your team from anywhere. You've got automatic payroll tax filing, simple direct deposits, health benefits, workers comp 401k, you name it. Gusto makes it simple and has options for nearly every budget. One of my favorite subjects to cartoon is Sisyphus. Endlessly pushing that boulder up a hill and I've felt like Sisyphus in the past with paperwork, forms and logistics. But now, thanks to Gusto, I don't need to live that existential dread. I can just draw about it. Try gusto today@gusto.com New Yorker and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll@gusto.com NewYorker One more time gusto.com NewYorker Confession time I've never had a brand new mattress hand me downs stoop sales. I've spent my whole life sleeping in secondhand beds, so you can imagine what a revelation it's been to sleep on my new mattress from Leesa. I got the Sapira hybrid model and what a game changer. High airflow foam with a soft breathable cover. This medium firm with just the right amount of bounce tailored to my sleep preferences in a way that makes me genuinely excited to go to bed at night. The entire Leesa lineup is gorgeous. They have an option for everybody no matter how you roll sleepwise. Whether you like soft or firm, cool or cozy, Leesa has a mattress perfect for you. And Leesa's about more than sleep. They're about impact. They donate thousands of mattresses every year to those in need, while also partnering with organizations like Clean Hub to remove harmful plastic waste from our oceans that definitely helps me sleep easier. Go to leesa.com for 20% off mattresses plus get an extra $50 off with promo code newyorker exclusive for my listeners. That's L E-E-S A.com promo code newyorker for 20% off mattresses plus an extra $50 off. Support our show and let them know we sent you after checkout Lisa.com promo code NewYorker.
- [02:31]
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 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 today. My guest is Maya C. Popa. She's the author of Wound is the Origin of Wonder and American Faith, which won the North American Book Prize. Her third collection, if youf Love that Lady, will be published by W.W. norton this July. She's the poetry editor of Publishers Weekly and teaches in the undergraduate and MFA programs at New York University. Maya, welcome. Thanks for joining.
- [03:14]
Maya C. Popa
Thank you so much for having me, Kevin.
- [03:16]
Kevin Young
So the first poem you've chosen to read is Artless by Brenda Shaughnessy. What was it about this poem that drew your eye when you were looking through the archive?
- [03:24]
Maya C. Popa
Oh my goodness, I am just so grateful to have a chance to talk about this poem. First of all, its sonic pleasures are unmatched and it is funny. And if you read a lot of poetry, you know that that is a rare combination. And having said that, it still delivers a lyric argument about the heart, which is something I think we turn to in poetry often. And then the other aspect of it that I love is that it reminds me that free verse doesn't mean free from form. So this is a poem that has generated its own way of delivering form. It's intersects, as we'll see, it repeats the sound less, which forces Brenda to invent new words to make the form stick. And so it's just a delight and I'm genuinely excited to read it out loud.
- [04:12]
Kevin Young
Well, why don't we hear the poem? Here is Maya C. Popa reading Artless by Brenda Shaughnessy
- [04:21]
Maya C. Popa
Artless is my heart a stranger berry There never was tartless gone sour in the sun, in the sun room or moonroof roofless no poetry plain, no fresh special recipe to bless all I've ever made with these hands and life love less substance more rind, mostly rim and trim, meatless but making much smoke in the old smokehouse no less fatted from the day, overripe and even toxic at eve. Nonetheless, in the end, if you must know, if I must bend wasteless to that excruciation, no marvel, no harvest left me speechless, Yet I find myself somehow with heart alone less with heart fighting fire with fire flightless that loud hub of us, meat stub of us, beating us senseless, spectacular in its way, its way of not seeing, congealing, dayless. But in everydayness, in that hopeful, haunting, a lesser way of saying in darkness there is silencelessness. For the pressing question, heart, what art you war star part or less? Playing apart, Staying apart from the one who loves loveless.
- [06:06]
Kevin Young
That Was Artless by Brenda Shaughnessy, which was originally published in the August 8, 2011 issue of the New Yorker. It was so great to hear you read that. And I confess I thought of this less as free verse than you said and more like a kind of rhymed, playful sense of form. But I think you point out that form can be freeing in some way and that I was wondering how you. Do you think of form in that way all the time, or do you think that here with Brenda, or is there something bigger that comes from just seeing how she does this so well here?
- [06:42]
Maya C. Popa
I think I always return to that Elliot adage that form is merely an extension of content. So one of the things we're doing as re. Revise, or one of the things I'm thinking about as I revise is how can I develop a form that feels intense, entirely necessary to the poem? And in this case, you know, I think we could look at this and say, well, it's sort of working in the shadow of the guzzle, and it's using a repeated sound scheme. And so in that way, it feels formal. It's not a strict form. It's not something that's been passed down, invented or poetry. Exactly, exactly. It's entirely the form that this poem needed to be in. And often we only find that, again, in the course of revision, we might be led towards a particular sound patterning or a particular collection of, like, you know, a collection of words that feels textured and interesting. And then we follow intentionally that trail that those words have, you know, left behind for us or left ahead of us. But I think to execute this so consistently through. I mean, I would be so interested to see Brenda's drafts of this poem because it would be fascinating to see, too. This is what remains. But who knows how many other tercets played around with that less sound, how many actually ended up sticking into the. Staying into the poems or being removed from it. So, yes, I think what I admire is that it's so insistent. And of course, that's one of the dangers of rhyme, too, is that it can feel like the hand is being led by something that is not natural. Or, as Keats says, that There's a palpable design on us as the reader, and that doesn't feel as though it happens here at all. And I think part of that is because of the playfulness of the tone. I think if the tone were one that were really out to say something of great philosophical depth about the heart, if it were more of a treatise, it wouldn't quite work. But we get a lesser way of saying in darkness as a parenthetical in the poem. Right. And it feels. Again, tongue in cheek, or it feels as though the speaker is slightly aware that you're aware that they are repeating this over and over again and that they are. They're trying to one up themselves each time.
- [08:54]
Kevin Young
But I think there's. I'm glad you pointed out to that stanza. Cause to me, that's where we've been brought to a place where she can get away with anything. You're like, I'll follow you anywhere at this point. Cause she says in that hopeful, haunting parenthesis, a lesser. Which is playing even with the rhyme, it's not less, it's lesser. So a lesser way of saying, in darkness there is silencelessness, which you've said so well and read so well. You know, we're all like on pins and needles. How's that gonna happen? Reading along with you, but hearing it too, there's that strangeness. And I'm wondering about the way that the poem's comfortable with defamiliarizing us as it creates this expectation of sound.
- [09:41]
Maya C. Popa
Yes.
- [09:42]
Kevin Young
I wonder how that works for you. And what that says about the heart, too.
- [09:46]
Maya C. Popa
So I think a great way that it's doing that is, yes, through its sonic landscape, but also through its negation. There's so much here. So anytime we do this no marvel, the question is, first we have to establish what a marvel is to have a. No marvel, no harvest. Right. Sure. Meatless silencelessness, which is the hardest. Yes. It's very difficult to say silencelessness. You really have to practice that one. But what does that even mean? Right. Congealing. Dayless. What is dayless? Senseless. We have a shortcut for flightless. Right. So it's doing this brilliant thing of requiring you very quickly to imagine the thing and then the absence of the thing.
- [10:26]
Kevin Young
Yes.
- [10:27]
Maya C. Popa
And I think if in a poem about love, I mean, Eros depends on absence. It depends on there being a gap between what is desired and what is available at the time. So in a way, perhaps it's also playing with that tension and having so much fun doing that. And I think part of that Question. Heart, what art you wore? Star part or less. Playing a part. I mean, to ask if something is a part or if it's playing a part is also a fabulous example of the wordplay here. To be a part of something or to play a part. They're homonyms, but they're not the same thing. Right.
- [11:03]
Kevin Young
Well, then. And staying apart. All one word. Apart from the one who loves Loveless.
- [11:09]
Maya C. Popa
Yes.
- [11:10]
Kevin Young
It's funny because you're talking about the humor, but I think there's a lot of heartbreak in the poem. Or maybe it's an unmaking of happiness. Another S sound.
- [11:21]
Maya C. Popa
Yes.
- [11:21]
Kevin Young
In the way that silencelessness is sort of the state of not being silent, but it's so much more. It itself stretches out into a kind of full description, you know, on a monopoeia. A word that sounds like what it means, but what it means has been made by the poet. And there's something really powerful about that. And this question I take as not funny. It doesn't mean it's not playful. Heart. What aren't you? If you knew, you wouldn't have to write the whole poem about it. But it's wrestling with a heart that is also more and less. It's pressing. The pressing question is also a question of the self. Like, what am I? What are we? What art thou, heart? I wonder about that.
- [12:09]
Maya C. Popa
Yes, I think that's certainly true. And I think perhaps it's that modulation that allows it to be so impactful at the end. We always want a moment of perhaps more genial lightheartedness. And then the question that suddenly cements you in. Right. It's that movement, but I think so.
- [12:27]
Kevin Young
She's gotten us there.
- [12:28]
Maya C. Popa
Yeah, she's got us in the palm of her hand.
- [12:30]
Kevin Young
Cause she couldn't have started out the poem with that. No, not anymore. Like one day, you know, once upon a time, this would have been how you started. What art thou? You know, what art thou.
- [12:39]
Maya C. Popa
Exactly. We didn't go high register from the beginning. We waited for that high register. In fact, the title bleeds into the first line. Artless is my heart a stranger. Barry. There never was tartless. I mean, there is something about the inversion there too. Because we would expect this to go. My heart is artless. Right. Artless is my heart. We have this slight Miltonic inversion. But I think the thing that makes me feel this is still written from a place perhaps not of sorrow, but of a kind of a safe reckoning is yet I find myself somehow with heart Alone less. If one is alone less. They are presumably with heart and with someone. Right. And I think sometimes we need to write these kinds of poems from the safety of a place of feeling relatively alone, less to be able to give it its full run. But again, just a reminder for anyone who writes poems too, that commitment matters so much. I mean, if you can commit to the form that you're hearing in your head. And there's so much.
- [13:42]
Kevin Young
I thought you were giving us relationship advice.
- [13:44]
Maya C. Popa
Oh, no, certainly not. That will be on the next podcast. No, but committing to the soundscape, because no one is gonna hand you a permission slip and say, yeah, it's a really good idea for you to write 20 tercets, all ending in less.
- [13:57]
Kevin Young
Right.
- [13:58]
Maya C. Popa
We really think that you're gonna pull this off. You have to give yourself that permission and to think there must be something g. That insistence. And again, moonroof, rim and trim. I mean, we're not even going. We don't have enough time to go into all of the different chimes, sonic chimes. And what that does, of course, is in the absence of a strict form, it creates for the ear a kind of cohesion, a kind of sonic cohesion that amplifies what the content is saying. Right. And that's again, the beautiful marriage between form and content.
- [14:28]
Kevin Young
Well, I wonder about the kind of negation that you mentioned earlier. And in a line like, no poetry plain, no fresh special recipe to bless all I've ever made with these hands and life. Less substance, more rind. Is it kind of an ars poetica or maybe even an anti ars poetica kind of poem that's about what isn't poetry? While it, of course, in the same way, like you're saying, it negates in order to affirm. Is it doing something like that, playing with this idea of what a poem can be? I mean, obviously all poems do that, but, like, does it. Is it self conscious about it?
- [15:07]
Maya C. Popa
I guess, yes, it's self conscious. And it's so artful. I mean, that's the joke here, right? It's the heart that is artless, the heart that is mostly rim and trim, the heart that is meatless, the heart that's making much smoke in the old smokehouse, no less. I just love the voice of it.
- [15:24]
Kevin Young
So that's the heart, you think, or the poem?
- [15:26]
Maya C. Popa
I think it's the heart, I think the. Perhaps the poet and perhaps the heart, but not the poem itself, which is in some ways performing its artfulness in this really, you know, it's kind of a sonic tour de force as it continues on. So I Think it's saying, this is what the heart is. It's perhaps elemental and basic compared to the artistry that we have associated with. We have a tradition of sonnet love sonnets. We have, you know, love and elegy remain the two poles or, you know, the weaving poles of literature. So I think it is, again, one of the ways that it's winking at us, as it were.
- [16:05]
Kevin Young
I love that. I'm really struck by how it isn't just a negation, but there's these kind of reversals. And it almost, in that way, is a kind of blessing, you know, when you say there's no poetry in it playing, no fresh, special recipe to bless. It also is saying in that is a poetry, that poetry, at least to me, I thought this probably before I read this poem. But it feels like it enforces this idea that there is poetry of going sour in the sun or rim and rind and the kind of throwaway things is what I'm taking it all I've ever made with these hands in life. Less substance, more rind. And that kind of those I sounds. Rind, rim and trim, as you pointed out, they also are visual. On the page, they look like different than the less parts. And there's this kind of I. And I think it's, you know, the capital I, I, the self that in the artfulness, as you point out, is saying something quite different than the artlessness of the heart. So I wonder, you know, how it leaves us that tension between being playful and being profound, which I think is what a good poem does. I mean, it makes us know that those two things can coexist.
- [17:34]
Maya C. Popa
Yes, and I'm so glad you brought up sort of the visual data we get from the way that it's organized. Because if one were to look at the page, you'd see that that third line is usually a standalone words. It's tartless, ruthless to bless, lifeless. So it's considerably. It's about half the length of the other line, except where we get a kind of volta or turn in the poem, which is, let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Stanzas in. Fatted from the day, overripe and even toxic at eve. So that's all still the heart. The heart is fatted from the day, it's overripe, it's even toxic at eve, which we can all admit to having
- [18:11]
Kevin Young
a little bit of at the end of the day.
- [18:12]
Maya C. Popa
Toxic at the little. Cranky.
- [18:14]
Kevin Young
Cranky.
- [18:15]
Maya C. Popa
Precisely. But then we have nonetheless. And so that's the Line that really interrupts that is the longest line of the tercet. So it's toxic at eve nonetheless. And then again, in the end, if you must know. So to me, again, this is an unnecessary elaboration, but that is so delightfully voiced. Right. We hear that we are being spoken to. And this is something Brenda does so well in her poetry. Right. She certainly is a poet, I think, who writes where we feel that the I and the speaker are one. It's not the I is a supposed person, but you also. There is also something that feels so intricate, personal.
- [18:51]
Kevin Young
Exactly what I love about this poem. And you put your finger on it, I think, because people often think personal and autobiographical are the same. And I think what I love about a poem, and especially in this moment, and there were very important moments where they were where people said, I'm going to tell the truth about my life and I'm going to say it plain and I'm going to talk about things that we maybe couldn't have talked about before. And in fact, I'm the person who's going to break down those walls. And there's many of those poets who I admire and love. Lucille Clifton being one, who I think, really managed to capture the personal and the autobiographical together. But she also was interested in myth and the way that myth spoke through her to her, and she could transform it. Here, what I hear is something that's personal, it's intimate. We're seeing inside this meat stub of us, the loud hub of us, but it isn't telling you what they had for breakfast necessarily. They're like going to the root of the matter. And I think there's sometimes there's still a confusion when we hear something and we identify with it, but we can't pick out, like, you know, a kind of specific, kind of, I don't know, portrait of the artist as a person at 9:00am or 9:30 or 10:15, or instead, it's like this is a. About a life, about a heart, about fighting fire with fire, flightless, that loud hub of us, meat stub of us beating us senseless. And that sort of combination of triumph and tragedy, I hear. The senselessness of things, I think is really powerful.
- [20:36]
Maya C. Popa
I agree fully and I think. And I love how you delivered those lines and the way we could hear, the repetition of us there, that feels so. I've used this word before, but insistent, but it also conveys the sense of struggle, as you said, the sense of this is not easy to live through. This is something that we are all Implicated in. And I think part of what you were intimating about the confessional versus sort of how we read a poem like this is perhaps not necessarily in the confessional tradition, though it begins in the self, as all poems do. I think the idea is that it's essentialized, right? It's been distilled, it's been alchemized. So there is something I find occasionally disappointing when we reach a poem that has a lot of prosaic discursive detailing. That feels as though it's not fueling the undercurrent of the poem. So if the poem has an ostensible subject and an underlying subject, the underlying subject is not being fueled by all of the details that are left in. And so that's always what I think about when I read a poem like this. I think, how much longer would this have been? How did it look? What did it look like originally? I mean, we read drafts of one art, and we see Bishop's diary entry, basically. I mean, those first drafts are really just her puttering in the dark, trying to understand what the subject will be. And then over the course of many drafts, we hear her beginning to pick up on the refrain. We hear her beginning to distill that. And again, that's the essential work of the poem. It takes many drafts to figure out what we mean. And it's often not what we go in thinking that we mean. Right. The question has to be a real question, not a gesture. And I think part of what she's earned here is the chance to say, hart, what art you. If the poem began. Hart, what aren't you. We'd all tap out pretty quick, right?
- [22:28]
Kevin Young
Well, because you were calling it, you know, it's an earned question, I think. But also, that isn't the only question the poem is interested in.
- [22:37]
Maya C. Popa
No, not at all.
- [22:37]
Kevin Young
That is maybe the heart of the poem. I also think it's the art of the poem.
- [22:43]
Maya C. Popa
Yes.
- [22:43]
Kevin Young
You know, the art of the poem is that sort of slippage.
- [22:46]
Maya C. Popa
Right. And, in fact, she spent quite a lot of time telling us what the artless heart is. And we have the whole, you know, first 2/3 of the poem with these brilliant. Mostly rim and trim, meatless, making much smoke in the smoke, how fatted from the day. So she seems to have a sense of what the heart is. But then what is the heart? I mean, it's really one of those questions that cannot be answered. And therefore, it feels ripe for poetry.
- [23:15]
Kevin Young
Hearing you talk about it, I started thinking about song. Maybe I always am. But there is a Song like quality to the poem. And I almost think it has a kind of ballad quality. And I don't mean like a romantic ballad. I mean almost like, you know, that tradition of the ballad. And what I love about the ballad is the first stanza and the last stanza are the same. But what's happened is you've had a journey or a trip or a tale of death and woe, and by the end those same exact words are different. And a. A poem does that in ways that I just love. But I also think, let's call it a refrain in this poem, this less and ness. That's the refrain here. That heart is different, you know, because she's repeated it so much, you know, I almost think like it is kind of in the beginning, you know, artless is my heart, you know, it's not every heart, but it's, you know, and that's almost a fear and a kind of wish at the same time that, as you point out, is almost disproven by the poem itself. But then to ask it again, I think is kind of the refrain coming around is the kind of ballads. Because it's totally different kind of question now, because we believe it more, because she's explored it first.
- [24:34]
Maya C. Popa
I love that you brought the ballad in. Absolutely. And I think we love. So it's certainly not a circular ending, but I love, as you say about the ballad and the idea of sort of the picaresque. And you have a million challenges, but by the end you are transfigured, you are transformed, and you become who you are on the journey. You become who you are by meeting all of those challenges. So I certainly don't feel that this is a poem that. That would ask for more. In fact, what it's doing is by subtraction, by less, by less, by less. It's showing us really the power of this thing, this vessel that holds all of these different states. And then it ends again or less. Playing a part. To play a part and to be artless or artful. That's a really interesting tension too.
- [25:18]
Kevin Young
Yeah, that's the part I want to ask you, the ending. Do you believe it there?
- [25:25]
Maya C. Popa
Yes.
- [25:26]
Kevin Young
When it says playing a part, staying apart. You know, I get that. Then it says staying apart from the one who loves loveless. And so is it saying that the one who loves is loveless or that just the act of loving gives away love so that there is less love left? I don't believe it thinks that, but there's a kind of risk of that in the poem.
- [25:50]
Maya C. Popa
Yes. And I don't know that we'll find a concrete, suitable answer. And that's. Yet I find myself somehow with heart alone less. I keep coming back to that because it's so straightforward. Yet I find myself somehow with heart alone less or less playing a part, staying apart. So perhaps it's that when one is playing a part, that's when they're staying apart from the one who loves. So, you know, we've all been loved by someone that we thought, oh, God, do I. Can I open myself to be loved by this person? Is this something I even want to do? Or is it just easier to go through life disaffected and a little cool and stony? Do we really want to put ourselves on the line each time? And that would be when we are loveless, Right? That would be when we are without love. Is if we are staying apart, then we are without love.
- [26:34]
Kevin Young
That's right.
- [26:34]
Maya C. Popa
But to be alone less is a positive thing in this poem. But to be loveless is not potentially right.
- [26:40]
Kevin Young
Yeah, I love that reading. What I love about this poem is mystery, is there's a level of mystery. And I think the more I go along, the more I think mystery is underrated in poems. And people mistake it for confusion or some aspect of kind of not saying what you mean. What I love about this poem is it couldn't have been said in any different way. It had to create this form, as you point out, and it had to take us through it. If it was shorter, I don't think it would work as well. It's the kind of tension and contortion and a turning over. I mean, but also revelation that occurs when you go all the way.
- [27:27]
Maya C. Popa
I think what you said about mystery. I think if we're doing it right, mystery is a requirement because it is the condition of our lives on Earth. I mean, there's no greater mystery than why any of us is here. Why any of us is here. Feels that the axis and the pole change when we fall in love. I mean, all of that feels at the heart of all things. But there's a real difference between mystery and deliberate obfuscation, which I think is part of what you were suggesting is that we're not intending to be deliberately oblique. In fact, it's a little of that frost. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. I wonder and strongly suspect that Brenda would have surprised herself many times writing this. Right? And perhaps she went in one direction and then found that the sound pushed her in another. I don't believe she had a thesis in mind, I shall write a poem about the heart that disproves or proves xyz. So I think being willing to go along for the ride as we write is essential. And then trying to get clearer and clearer about the mystery but not trying to solve the mystery. I think those are two different things.
- [28:40]
Kevin Young
More from my conversation with Maya C. Popa after the break.
- [28:50]
Maya C. Popa
I'm Shilpa Uskokovic.
- [28:51]
Jason Adam Katzenstein
And I'm Jesse Sepczyk and we're the
- [28:53]
Maya C. Popa
hosts of the Bon Appetit Bake Club podcast.
- [28:56]
Jason Adam Katzenstein
Bake Club is Bon Appetit's community of confident, curious bakers.
- [28:59]
Maya C. Popa
Jesse and I love to bake. Some might even call us obsessive. And we love to talk about all the hows and whys and what didn't works that come with it.
- [29:08]
Jason Adam Katzenstein
Every month we publish a recipe on bon appetit.com that introduces a baking concept we think you should know.
- [29:13]
Maya C. Popa
Then you'll bake. Send us any questions you have and
- [29:16]
Jason Adam Katzenstein
we'll get together here on the podcast to talk about the recipe.
- [29:20]
Maya C. Popa
So consider this your official invitation.
- [29:22]
Jason Adam Katzenstein
Come join the Ba Bake Club new episodes on the first Tuesday of every month. Wherever you get your podcasts, Happy Baking.
- [29:31]
Maya C. Popa
A girls getaway to Fort Myers just feels right. Unwind on soft white sand beaches, savor fresh Gulf seafood, and take in the unfiltered beauty of a sunset. Enjoy warm days and fun nights throughout our islands, beaches and neighborhoods. Start planning your trip@visitfortmyers.com. If your eyes are the windows to your soul and your glasses are the windows to your eyes, then it's pretty important to find your perfect frames. That's why at Warby Parker we've made shopping for eyewear as easy and fun as can be. Peruse endless styles in our stores, or use our app to virtually try on frames and get personalized recommendations. To find your next favorite pair of glasses, sunglasses, or contact lenses, or to locate your nearest Warby Parker store, head over to warbyparker.com that's warbyparker.com.
- [30:26]
Kevin Young
Maya, welcome back.
- [30:27]
Maya C. Popa
Thank you so much.
- [30:29]
Kevin Young
Now, in our November 10, 2025 issue, the new Yorker published your poem the World Was All Before Them, which you'll read for us in a moment. I was curious if there's anything you want to tell us about the poem before we hear it.
- [30:42]
Maya C. Popa
The only thing I'd say about the poem is that I owe a debt and credit to Milton for its title.
- [30:48]
Kevin Young
Perfect. Here's Maya C. Popa reading her poem the world was all before them,
- [30:55]
Maya C. Popa
the world was all before them. I wasn't fooled by these walls of my body, but loved them. Touched like a seed that germinates in fire. Shy slide of pressure, tally of cries I am my first and oldest system, A figment of that first imagination set running. But I concede to your vision. That look you give me like nothing other than my throat will do. Your affair with my ankles is legion. An emperor thumbing his ostrich plumes. A moon drawn down with string to delay a debt. You have made me an Eden. The veins of my wrist, the twin rivers of heaven. An altar where neck meets spine. Eden, by which I mean you, will leave me.
- [31:54]
Kevin Young
That was the world was all before them. By Maya C. Popa thank you for reading that incredible poem. I remember reading it myself and being struck by its beauty and brevity. It has that kind of sonnet like quality. I confess. I think I just thought it was a 14 line sonnet. But I know it's 15 lines. How did that happen for you? Was there just too much to contain or are you saying something else about a sonnet? I have my suspicions.
- [32:23]
Maya C. Popa
I do think it fits with a sonnet. I think perhaps more in its intrinsic sense of having a kind of argument and a kind of solution to it. And I think that's a form I return to all the time, just psychically, not for its greater tradition. Except I always love to bring up the fact that in the 17th century the sonnet was primarily used as a legal form. Legal offices used sonnets to summarize cases. Because there's just something incredibly satisfying about 14 lines to present an argument and to resolve it, more or less. And so I think at no point did I try to fit this into 14 lines. I think at one point it must have been about 16 or 17 lines. And then I cut one of the. Which isn't a sonnet, which is not a sonnet.
- [33:07]
Kevin Young
There are 50 line sonnets and there's 16 line sonnets. But once you go above 16. No, I'm being serious, man. I think once you. Once you lose the quatraininess of it, even though I sometimes violate that myself, I think that you lose something about it.
- [33:23]
Maya C. Popa
Unacceptable violation. Red card in poetry. Well, I think also we have to remember, I mean, we don't have to do anything. But one of the interesting things is because it comes from the petrarchan, which is 8 and 6, that also gives us this particular liberty. So why not then say, well, we could actually extend that introduction of the argument to. To nine and then give us seven lines, right? There are all kinds of ways to balance the sonnet. But I think here again, what would have happened over the course of the revision process was. And this is very typical for how I write, is that I would have, you know, enjoyed the process of writing other images. So your affair with my ankles is Legion and Emperor thumbing his ostrich plumes. I might have had two or three more examples like that that delight me. The idea of the ostrich plume in a poem. I was like, thank goodness you. So you go to your trove and you sort of dig around for beauty. But then part of the revision process very much for me is to pare back from that impulse and to decide what actually is saying something or helping with that argument. And what is just lush. And there's nothing wrong with that. But it was not what I wanted for the poem, I think.
- [34:36]
Kevin Young
Did you say that there was a kind of balance?
- [34:38]
Maya C. Popa
Yes.
- [34:39]
Kevin Young
Is that what you were talking about before? Because I think that the sonnet is often about imbalance.
- [34:44]
Maya C. Popa
Tell me more, Mr. Young.
- [34:46]
Kevin Young
The sonnet, and this one too, I think, teeters between this tension between the I and the you.
- [34:53]
Maya C. Popa
Yes.
- [34:54]
Kevin Young
Which a sonnet, even if it doesn't say the you, there's always this kind of beloved lurking behind it. And what I notice, looking at it again, is the way that it starts with this I. But then at that exact moment, your affair with my ankles is legion. There's a kind of. I mean, it happens a little bit before I can see to your vision, but there's this kind of play between the idea of the self and the idea that the you has. Of the self.
- [35:22]
Maya C. Popa
Yes.
- [35:22]
Kevin Young
And I think that that tension is in many sonnets, but not done always as well as you've done it here. But there's this kind of quality of, does the beloved know me? Do I know the beloved?
- [35:34]
Maya C. Popa
Yes. Yeah.
- [35:34]
Kevin Young
Can I be known? All these questions that, you know, as we were talking about before, one walks around asking the perennial questions. Yeah. Small things like. Little.
- [35:43]
Maya C. Popa
Small things like, do I even matter? Does this matter?
- [35:47]
Kevin Young
Loveless, you know, the one who loves standing apart. But there's a distance in the sonnet, is what I'm trying to say, because the beloved is always away. Right. The beloved is yearned for and described from afar or remembered in intimate detail, but almost after. And there's something beautiful about your inversion of that. The self is remembering the self.
- [36:14]
Maya C. Popa
Yes.
- [36:14]
Kevin Young
Thank you for saying that in the beginning. And then it's saying, okay, I concede to your vision.
- [36:20]
Maya C. Popa
Yes. Yes.
- [36:21]
Kevin Young
That look you give me like nothing break other than my throat will do. And, you know, seeing it on the page, the sort of shy slide of the pressure of your lines is really amazing. And to hear imagination and vision, and then you break that with nothing. And I think there's moments of that affair in Emperor, like the slippage between the lines, but exactly at that moment where vision and imagination, they're almost in dialogue, but also kind of in conflict. Cause the beloved in this poem, I think, doesn't have the imagination to see the self.
- [37:01]
Maya C. Popa
That was beautifully read. And I think you're absolutely right. I think there's a great deal of conflict here. I mean, beginning with the shadow of the sonnet form and the idea of distance being at the heart of it. And, you know, we have Petrarch and Laura. But then the first English sonnets we have are Wyatt writing about Anne Boleyn. Right. So it's really, really risky stuff to begin with. And so I think probably the latent influence behind this poem, and I think one of the things I was interested in is, you know, the Milton line. And out of the world was all before them, and out of Eden they took their solitary way. The idea of.
- [37:34]
Kevin Young
You may have to read that slower for the rest of us whose Milton is a little bit r. Repeat that slower for us humans.
- [37:42]
Maya C. Popa
No, because the speed of it was in case I was getting it wrong. Then the Milton scholars won't come for me. But I believe it's something that the world was all before them, and out of Eden they took their solitary way. So I was very interested in the idea of being left and of Eden and of choice and of the absence of choice and all of those things. And, you know, this idea of being. If one is in Eden, if one is put on such a pedestal, then the only thing to do is to leave. And that is one of the risks of love, again, is that we become. And this is really what my entire collection is about, is that we invent the beloved. We worship the beloved we've invented. And it can become an act of solipsism. It can, in fact, be that we love the thing we have created and authored. And the moment it breaks that script, we lose a particular kind of interest or we become disillusioned. So this poem is very much playing with that disillusionment. And it's saying, too, I'll play along. So I am my first and oldest system. It's not the great religious system that I belong to. It's not your desire for me that makes me desire you. I am the Thing that is at the heart of everything, I am the operant power. And then here's the next set of the imagination. Right, here's what I agree to, but I think it's doing it with a bit of suspicion. I think the speaker has a bit of reservation about this. So here are all these wonderful ways that you are worshiping me. And who wouldn't want the veins of their wrists to be the twin rivers of heaven? I just want to briefly talk about this. The moon drawn down with string to delay a debt. I was reading a critical book on the moon in ancient Greece, and there's something called the Thessalian trick. And essentially in ancient Greece, the moon established the debt payback cycle. So if you owed a farmer X number of whatever, it would be due on the next full moon. So the Thessalian trick is a visual, an optical illusion where the moon was drawn down. So it involved fish scales, it involved a mirror in the sand. It was very complex, but essentially it was to be able to delay having to repay.
- [39:55]
Kevin Young
So there's a debt that's being delayed.
- [39:56]
Maya C. Popa
Exactly, a debt that's being delayed. And I think that's part of the Eden story too, is there's no way to live in Eden. It is no place to live. It is ephemeral. It can only exist. So I'm very interested again in the invention of the beloved. And then what we do after, what we do when we are out of Eden, what happens next. Right. And that could be a metaphor for the beginning of any number of relationships as well, I believe. Sort of this incredible rush and then the reality, and how do we tend the garden, how do we bring it to Earth rather than sort of siloing it.
- [40:33]
Kevin Young
Well, poetry maybe.
- [40:35]
Maya C. Popa
Poetry certainly. And I think, in fact, I'm not pro Eden in a way, because I think it's kind of anti imagination. Part of our job as poets is to find what is beautiful, what is resonant in the real, what is here. Right. And to catalog it and to bring it and to make it again with the full measure of our powers, sonically rich and beautiful. Even if it's not right. It's not, because everything is easy. So who would want to be an Eden? Right. Eden can only exist because it cannot exist long term.
- [41:06]
Kevin Young
Beautifully put. Can you tell us more about your collection? If you love that lady, the one that's coming out soon.
- [41:13]
Maya C. Popa
Yes, yes. So that is Robert Graves advice to Sigfrid Sassoon, is if you love that lady, don't marry her. And so it's Quite. It's tongue in cheek. And that's the epigraph of the book alongside Emily Dickinson asking, is my verse alive? To Higginson. So it's really a book in part that is thinking about epistolary and it's thinking about the invention of other people. And it's doing it again, not from. With any accusation, but with really, if there's any accusation, the book itself accusation. It's really wondering where have I given others a power that they didn't have? Where have I done them a discredit by not seeing who they really were? I'm really interested in these questions of a particular kind of lyric accountability that adds another layer to how we write about love and how we write about desire and the beloved. So it is certainly playing on that motif or that conceit throughout the book. And I read a Wonderful collection of 19th century love letters that I drew some inspiration from as well as I investigated that subject, as it were, throughout the course of the book. And so, yes, I think this poem is sort of an example of the kinds of inquiry that are in the book.
- [42:29]
Kevin Young
Well, you know, we've talked before about titles and how we love them and what kind of titles we love, but I noticed that this poem's title, the World was All Before Them and if youf Love that Lady, are both these kind of quotes.
- [42:42]
Maya C. Popa
And there are many others in the book that are playing off of romantic poems as well. I've sort of excerpts from the Prelude that I'm in response to. I think it's. I love Jean Reese's idea that all of writing is a great lake and we're all just contributing to this lake. And if you're Dov Stroevsky, you're contributing a very large channel or whatever it were. And if you're Jean Rhys, as she says, you're contributing a trickle. And so if Jean Rhys is the trickle, then I'm like the one wayward raindrop that has somehow made its way onto the path.
- [43:12]
Kevin Young
Don't you like these ripples, though, that are out to other literature?
- [43:16]
Maya C. Popa
Yes, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I think it's. If part of the pleasure of writing for me is trying in some ways in an artful, ideally way, to map out what it feels to live in a mind and to be thinking, the activeness of thinking, then I think it's incredibly important to pay tribute or to really be in conversation with a poem in a way that is definable on the page. So for me, having a title that refers back to Milton is saying, this is part of that tradition. It's brought into this century, it's brought into this particular set of sensibilities. I'm not a Milton scholar by any means, but I would not be thinking about Eden if I hadn't read Milton the way I'd read it. It's not the Eden of the Old Testament that I'm interested in, it's Milton's Eden. So it's finding these resonances, and I think that's an extraordinary pleasure. When we read any poet who's working with illusion, it's wonderfully rich. So I think, yes, I feel very, very, very grateful to all of the writers who came before me every single day. I would not be the writer I am if I had not read their works. So the least I can do is make that tribute obvious.
- [44:28]
Kevin Young
Well, Maya, thank you so much for talking to me today. It's been wonderful to talk with you.
- [44:32]
Maya C. Popa
Thank you so much for having me, Kevin
- [44:36]
Kevin Young
the World Was All Before Them by Maya C. Popa, as well as Brenda Shaughnessy's art list can be found on new yorker.com Brenda Shaughnessy's most recent collection is Tanya Myasi Popa's new collection, if youf Love that Lady will be published in July.
- [44:55]
Jason Adam Katzenstein
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. This episode of the New York Repose Poetry Podcast was produced by John LeMay with editing by Michelle O'. Brien. The theme music is the Corner by Chief Zion Attunde Ajua, courtesy of Stretch Music and Rope a Dope. Thanks for listening.
- [45:50]
Maya C. Popa
From prx.