Ava DuVernay on “When They See Us,” About the Boys Who Became the Central Park Five

Summary

Podcast Summary: The New Yorker Radio Hour

Episode: Ava DuVernay on “When They See Us,” About the Boys Who Became the Central Park Five

Date: June 4, 2019
Host: David Remnick, WNYC Studios and The New Yorker
Guest: Ava DuVernay (filmmaker, creator of When They See Us)
Interviewer: Jelani Cobb (New Yorker staff writer)

---

Overview

This episode features an in-depth conversation between filmmaker Ava DuVernay and New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb, focusing on DuVernay’s four-part miniseries When They See Us. The series chronicles the story of the five Black and Latino teenagers—later exonerated—who became known as the Central Park Five, after being wrongfully convicted of a brutal assault in 1989. The discussion unpacks the events surrounding the case, themes of systemic racism in the criminal justice system, and the artistic process behind the series. The episode concludes with a segment on the late poet Mary Oliver.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Events of April 19, 1989, and the Wrongful Conviction

• Ava DuVernay recounts the case:
  • Five Black and Latino boys were picked up in Central Park, initially on minor charges such as loitering or assembly.

    “It was a large group, 30 to 40 boys in the park... messing with bicyclists and harassing and catcalling bicyclists.” (02:05)

  • The next morning, a woman (Trisha Meili) is found brutally raped and near death. Police began connecting the two incidents without physical evidence.
  • Despite a lack of DNA, hair, or blood evidence linking the boys, they were heavily interrogated, deprived of basic needs, and coerced into false confessions.

    “They didn't know details of the jogger...Through multiple days of coercion, deprived food, bathroom breaks, parental supervision, the boys eventually ended up saying that they did it... in an attempt to just get home.” (02:42)

• Systemic failures and racism:
  • The city and national media labeled them a “wolf pack,” fueling public outrage and a rush to judgment.

    “The whole city of New York turned against them. The national press began writing about them as a wolf pack of wilding animals...” (03:18)

  • No physical evidence, and the boys had no connection to the victim, yet were convicted and imprisoned.

    “There was never any DNA evidence... no physical evidence tying the boys to Tricia Miley...” (03:52)

  • Sentences: Corey Wise tried as adult at age 16, sent to Rikers Island for 14 years; the rest served 5-8 years.

Timestamps

• DuVernay details the police narrative and lack of evidence: [03:52-04:51]
• Details on sentences: [04:52-05:03]

The Social and Media Context

• DuVernay and Cobb discuss the chaotic 1989 NYC context—high violent crime, high-profile victimization, and the racial tropes fueling the narrative.

  “There was an attempt to create some order, create some kind of framing device... to be able to get a win on the board because there was just so many losses.” (05:08)

  • Media often omitted “alleged” in references, portraying guilt as fact.

    "89% of the press coverage at that time from the major New York papers didn’t use the word 'alleged'. So it was a rush to judgment." (05:24)

Timestamps

• Social context and press analysis: [05:03-06:45]

Origins of When They See Us

• Raymond Santana, one of the exonerated men, reached out to DuVernay on Twitter after Selma.

  “Shortly after Selma 2015, I got a tweet saying, 'What is your next film after Selma? Central Park 5. Hashtag, fingers crossed.'” (06:54)

• The narrative rights were still available, allowing DuVernay to take on the project.

Timestamps

• The Twitter connection: [06:45-07:32]

Crafting the Story: Authenticity and Artistic Process

• DuVernay insisted on truthfulness in depicting the boys’ experiences and their mutual realization of being coerced into false confessions.

  “They speak in very detailed, specific, emotional ways about the first time they all met... making a pact... to never lie again.” (08:23)

• No topics were off-limits; interviewees were candid about trauma and personal stories, such as the story of Korey Wise’s trans sister.

  “They were very, very open.... There was never off limits, right? Just wasn't being presented...” (09:17)

• Casting was an immense task, needing to match boys to their adult counterparts for authenticity.

  “This is the biggest cast I’ve ever worked with. 179 cast members, 117 speaking parts.” (10:33) “I was just, at one point, just going in circles, just dreaming about boys and men and pairings and just panicking. But we got it done.” (11:03)

Timestamps

• Mutual coercion and pact: [07:32-09:13]
• Casting process: [10:17-11:18]

Structural and Thematic Choices

• DuVernay considers the work a film rather than a series, using filmic rhythm and tools.

  "Jelani, I'm a filmmaker, okay?... I didn't make this like a series. I made it like a film." (11:28)

• The structure intentionally follows the criminal justice system’s stages: police, trial, incarceration, post-incarceration.

  “The overall goal for me... was to tell the story of what it means to be criminalized in this country and how that happens.” (12:24) “The first part... police interaction... The second part... court, trial... The third part... juvenile detention and post-incarceration... The fourth piece... the incarceration experience itself, particularly solitary confinement.” (13:24)

Timestamps

• Film/artistic structure: [11:18-14:35]

Racial Politics and Media Representation

• The case exemplified how the system and media treat violence against white women differently compared to women of color.

  "They used the cipher of this kind of pristine white woman, to be honest with you, because we know that there were women of color who were... raped and attacked that very same week that had no press coverage at all." (16:24)

Ongoing Lack of Accountability

• No apology from police or prosecutors; the narrative remains uncorrected in official circles.

  "No, they've never said, 'Oh, yeah, that was wrong.' They just say Matias Reyes... was the sixth guy. It should have been Central Park 6." (17:22) “Sometimes you have to call a lie a lie. This whole thing was built on a lie. It was revealed to be a lie. These men have been exonerated. That's why I don't call them the Central Park Five. I call them the... Exonerated Five.” (18:15)

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On coerced confessions:

  “They made us lie.” (07:51, paraphrased from dialogue)

• On exoneration and names:

  “They’re not the Central Park Five, you know, they’re Corey, Yusuf, Antron, Kevin, and Raymond. And they were boys with dreams, with families, with memory that we wanted to honor and recognize in this piece.” (19:12)

• On the criminal justice system:

  “The overall goal for me... was to tell the story of what it means to be criminalized in this country and how that happens.” (12:24)

• On why she did these stories:

  “No, it wasn’t close to me in terms of family, but it was all over my community... people who disappeared... people who were there one day and aren’t there the next day in my neighborhood.” (15:20)

---

Important Segment Timestamps

• 01:27–05:03 — DuVernay recounts the events and police actions of April 1989
• 05:08–06:45 — Discussion of New York’s context, crime rates, and racialized media coverage
• 06:45–07:32 — How Raymond Santana reached out to DuVernay
• 07:32–09:13 — The boys’ mutual realization, authenticity in storytelling
• 10:17–11:18 — DuVernay on casting and on-screen performances
• 11:18–14:35 — Artistic rendering and structural choices, paralleling 13th and Middle of Nowhere
• 16:03–17:18 — Why this case garnered outsized attention versus cases involving women of color
• 17:18–19:21 — No public apologies from officials, focus on exoneration and honoring the boys’ identities

---

Closing — Legacy and Reflection

DuVernay emphasizes the importance of showing not just the tragedy but the humanity of Corey, Yusuf, Antron, Kevin, and Raymond. The episode places When They See Us among her other works as both a narrative correction and a critique of systemic racism. The conversation layers personal, communal, and societal resonance, with DuVernay stressing the need to confront “the levers of the system that keep so many people oppressed” (13:24).

---

Bonus: Segment on Mary Oliver (Poet) [20:42–27:52]

The latter part of the episode features a tribute to poet Mary Oliver, with readings and commentary on her lasting impact and unique accessibility as a poet.

• Quote:

  “Attention is the beginning of devotion. That her poetic method as she presents it is very much about that kind of directed attention which presumably one could experience anywhere.” (David Haglund, 25:51)

---

For listeners seeking a comprehensive look at race, justice, artistry, and memory in American life, Ava DuVernay’s interview provides both an indictment of systemic failure and a testament to the resilience of the wronged.

Transcript

[David Remnick]

From one World Trade center in Manhattan. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of the New Yorker and wnyc Studios.

[Narrator/Host]

Ava DuVernay is probably best known for the movie Selma. It's a wrenching but finally triumphant story about the Alabama civil rights March led by Dr. King in 1965. But DuVernay's films have not always been so uplifting. Two years after Selma, she released 13th, named for the 13th Amendment. She draws a very direct connection between slavery and mass incarceration in our own time. Her new film also looks at justice and race in a way that can rightfully be called tragic. A four part miniseries called When They See Us. When They See Us is about the five teenagers whose lives were nearly destroyed after they were accused and convicted of a terrible crime in 1989. They became known as the Central Park Five. One of Donald Trump's first political acts, this was 30 years ago, was to take a newspaper ad out calling for their execution. And Trump stuck by that view, even after New York City admitted that the conviction of the five boys was wrong, exonerated them and paid them a settlement. Ava DuVernay recently sat down to talk about her film with New Yorker staff writer Jelani Cobb.

[Jelani Cobb]

So can you just walk us through what happened on the night of April 19, 1989?

[Ava DuVernay]

Sure. On the night of April 19, 1989, five black and brown boys were picked up in and around Central park. Both that night and the next morning. The first boys that were picked up were picked up for being boys will be boys in the park hanging out, you know, loitering, you know, unlawful assembly. Those are some of the things that they were picked up for. When you go back and look at the police records, it was a large group, 30 to 40 boys in the park who were also messing with bicyclists and harassing and catcalling bicyclists. That was what they were brought in for. The next morning, early in the morning, it's revealed that a woman has been raped in the park and she's near dead. She's been brutalized in the most horrific way. And while in the police department, an assumption is made that the boys who were in the park hanging out were the same people who raped the woman who was found on another side of the park. And so there started to be this attempt to put these two pieces of the puzzle together. And eventually the 30 went down to five. And those five boys were interrogated. They didn't know details of the jogger, they didn't know her race, they didn't know where she. They didn't know what she was wearing. They didn't know anything about it. Through multiple days of coercion, deprived food, bathroom breaks, parental supervision, the boys eventually ended up saying that they did it, that they were in fact with the jogger, that they did in fact rape her in an attempt to just get home, which was what was promised.

[Jelani Cobb]

Arrested within hours of the attack. Five teens, four black, one Latino, all charged with the brutal rape of a 28 year old jogger in New York's Central Park.

[Ava DuVernay]

And so from there, they became the Central Park Five. And the whole city of New York turned against them. The national press began writing about them as a wolf pack of wilding animals that assaulted this woman and they went to prison.

[Jelani Cobb]

So how did that connection happen between these young men who are on a different side of the park and this woman who was violated horrifically? What leads people to believe that there's a connection between these two incidents?

[Ava DuVernay]

I mean, what leads them to believe it? It certainly wasn't DNA evidence because there was never any. There was no physical evidence tying the boys to Tricia Miley, who's the victim, the rape victim. There was no hair samples in common, no skin under her fingernails in common with the boys, no weapon ever found, and she was obviously beaten with something that was never found from these boys on her and nothing from her on them. From the minute they were picked up in the park, they were immediately taken into the precinct. They had no blood on them, but she was completely bloodied. So all of these details didn't fit. And yet the police made them fit, made them fit to the point that these boys were arrested, tried and convicted of sodomy, rape, assault, attempted murder. And one of them, Corey Wise, he went immediately to an adult prison because in New York State.

[Jelani Cobb]

And how old was.

[Ava DuVernay]

He was 16. He went immediately into Rikers and didn't come out again for 14 years.

[Jelani Cobb]

And how long were the other four?

[Ava DuVernay]

A range of five to eight years.

[Jelani Cobb]

Talk to me a little bit about what the city was like at that point. Like, what was the context in which this happened?

[Ava DuVernay]

Well, you know.

[Jelani Cobb]

Yeah, I know, but, you know, you were here.

[Ava DuVernay]

I had to research it. But, you know, I'm from Compton and I was like, damn, it was rough here. It was very. Just a high, high crime. When you look at the crime rates, you know, the rates of murder and assault and rape, I mean, the city was. It was a city in chaos. And in the midst of that, there was an attempt to create some order, create some kind of framing Device, I believe, for all the chaos, for the police, for law enforcement, for the district attorney's office, the prosecutors, all of them, to be able to get a win on the board because there was just so many losses, so much going wrong. You know, Tricia Miley, who was so brutally assaulted, was, in some ways. And it's described by a journalist that I talked to, she was the perfect victim. Her victimization, you know, really fell into certain tropes, certain racial stereotypes and tropes in terms of her rape and, you know, black men and the rape of white women. And there was this kind of protector stance that was taken not just by the police, but by journalists. I mean, there was a study done. 89% of the press coverage at that time from the major New York papers didn't use the word alleged. And so it was a rush to judgment. And in the midst of all of that, and there's so many parts of that story you can tell. You had five boys and their families.

[Jelani Cobb]

So I've read that Raymond Santana reached out to you via Twitter and wanted you to tell. And Raymond Santana is one of the falsely accused young men?

[Ava DuVernay]

Yes, yes. Raymond Santana runs an account called Central Park Five. And so shortly after Selma 2015, I got a tweet asking, what is your next film after Selma? Question mark, question mark, Central Park 5. Hashtag, fingers crossed. And so I had just seen Sarah Burns beautiful documentary about it a few months before, and had. I DMed him, I slid into his DMs, and I. I said, does no one have your story, the narrative rights to your story? And he said, no. And I said, well, I'm gonna be in New York in a couple months. Maybe we can connect. So we set about our journey to make it.

[Jelani Cobb]

There's a really powerful scene where four of the five young men are in the same room for the first time, and they begin talking and very quickly realize that they've all been pressured to implicate each other. They've all been pressured to lie on each other. They made us lie.

[Narrator/Host]

Right.

[Jelani Cobb]

In Kevin Richardson, the character says, why they do us like this? And Raymond Santana's character in response says, what other way they ever do us? What other way they ever do us? Was this a conversation that the young men remembered, or was this something that you wrote based upon what you understood to have happened?

[Ava DuVernay]

No, that was real. They really. They speak in very detailed, specific, emotional ways about the first time they all met, the day that they met each other, the moment that they met in the interrogation room, when they introduce themselves to each other. And at the same time that's happening, they're being painted as a wolf pack gang on the outside of the precinct. They talked about, in that moment, really making a pact, which is not in the film. I shot it, but I didn't include it. They make a pact in their real memory, in that room, to never lie again. And I just think that's extraordinary. You're talking about 14, 15 year olds in there, kind of reconciling this traumatic experience, apologizing to one another and banding together. And they stuck to it.

[Jelani Cobb]

Were there any aspects of the story that were off limits with them?

[Ava DuVernay]

No, no. They were very, very open. In the final part of the film, you'll see a piece about Korey Wise's trans sister. And in all my interviews with him, he never talked about his trans sister. I found out about his sister. And it made its way into the film through the family member of another man who said, oh, I used to be in class with Norman. And I was like, who's Norman? Corey's brother. And I was like, oh, yeah, Cory does have a brother named Norman. I'm looking. And so I went back and I asked Corey, can you tell me about your brother Norman? And he said, oh, you mean my brother Marcy. And that's something that, as we were talking, he didn't tell me about. But it was never off limits, right? Just wasn't being presented in a story at that moment. And so as I would find different pieces of the guy's stories, sometimes through other, I could always bring it back to them. And they were always an open book.

[Jelani Cobb]

I want to talk about the artistry for a minute, which is one. There are some really phenomenal performances in this film. And I wondered what your casting process was like and what you were looking for in terms of performance.

[Ava DuVernay]

Gosh, this is the biggest cast I've ever worked with. It was 179 cast members, 117 speaking parts.

[Jelani Cobb]

Wow.

[Ava DuVernay]

My film before this, A Wrinkle in Time, had six cast members. The biggest piece was the boys. What we were gonna do about these boys. It kept me up at night. I would find the right boy, but couldn't find a man to match him. Right. Because the boys had to grow up to be men. I'd find a great guy, a great man, but there was no kid I found that looked like that guy. So I had to let him go. So I was just, at one point, just going in circles, just dreaming about boys and men and pairings and just panicking. But we got it done. And something I'm really very proud of. When you speak of artistry and then you went straight to the cast. I thank you for that.

[Jelani Cobb]

So there's a scene in the. Well, it's interesting you refer to it as a film. I think people would think of it as a series because it's four parts, but you think of it as a discrete film.

[Ava DuVernay]

Jelani, I'm a filmmaker, okay? I'm a filmmaker. I'm a serious auteur. I didn't make this like a series. I made it like a film. This is the rhythm of the production, the time that you're spending in post, the time that you're spending in prep. I really went into it with my film tool built as opposed to television.

[Jelani Cobb]

But there's a scene, a pivotal scene, when the mother of Yusef Salaam arrives at the police precinct to retrieve her son. And the police were in the middle of trying to get him to sign away his rights to an attorney. Before leaving the interrogation room, Youssef's mother approaches the only woman in the room. And that woman is Linda Fairstein. And she questions her ethics, essentially.

[Ava DuVernay]

Are you already interrogating my son back there without me? He is too young for that. He is a minor.

[Mary Oliver]

You can't stop us from interrogating a suspect. Who do you think you are?

[Ava DuVernay]

I'm his mother, and I'm stopping this. I'm stopping this right now. Right now. I want to see my son. I want to see my son right now. Right now. The woman that you're speaking about is Sharon Salaam, who was a mighty warrior mother for her child. Yusef Salaam, the only boy that did not make a false confession. He did not. His coercion never was completed because she was able to get inside of the interrogation room and pull him out, which I just think is extraordinary. The story of Yusef Salaam is the one that is even more insane because he had no confession. So he had no confession, he had no physical evidence, and he still went away. And so with this piece, yes, it is about this very famous case, the Central Park Five case, the Central park jogger case. But the overall goal for me, in addition to telling the story of these men, which was first and foremost, was to tell the story of what it means to be criminalized in this country and how that happens. So it's designed to take you through the whole terrain of the criminal justice system. The first part of the film deals with police interaction, police aggression, you know, the precinct environment. The second part of the film deals with court, trial, defense attorneys, prosecution, juries, bail. The third part of the film deals with juvenile detention and then also post incarceration, all the ways that we treat formerly incarcerated people as second class citizens in this country. And the fourth piece is a deep dive dedicated to the incarceration experience itself, particularly issues around solitary confinement. And so within that, while watching this, you're watching about this case that was a very famous case, but you're going to come out with a little bit of knowledge about all of those pieces of the puzzle. And so for me, it's a bit of a companion piece to 13th, which was talking a lot about the history of criminalization and how we got here. But this piece, I want to talk about what it is, all the levers of the system that keep so many people truly oppressed and ensnared in the system.

[Jelani Cobb]

Well, it's interesting that you say this is a companion piece to 13th because when I watched it, I thought of it as the third part of a trilogy, including your earlier film, Middle of.

[Ava DuVernay]

Nowhere, which no one's seen except you. There were three people, you were one of them. Don't make the people feel bad.

[Jelani Cobb]

I showed it to my class.

[Ava DuVernay]

So there was definitely more than 11.

[Jelani Cobb]

People, more than three people.

[Ava DuVernay]

But yeah, it does. You're right, it does speak to Middle of Nowhere, which was an independent film that I made about a woman whose husband is incarcerated. And the point of view of the film is her. So you're never going into the prison further than she goes. You're carrying the baggage of being this invisible victim, which is the case for so many families of incarcerated people.

[Jelani Cobb]

How close was your understanding of this issue before you started doing these stories?

[Ava DuVernay]

I know everybody thinks I've got like a husband in prison or, you know, a brother who's, you know, locked up or something. No, it's not. It wasn't close to me in terms of family, but it was all over my community. So there were all these, you know, people who disappeared. I remember thinking, people who were there one day and aren't there the next day in my neighborhood. Where is your daddy? Oh, he's locked up. Or where is the woman that was down the street? She's gone for two weeks. Picked up on something, but couldn't get bail, so she's still locked up. I just remember hearing these stories and it really stuck with me. It really stayed with me.

[Jelani Cobb]

One thing stands out to me. We can go back 30 years in the context of lots of women who were assaulted that same week. Most of them were women of color. We find this one case where the police, the prosecutors, the media, the public took this sexual assault exceedingly seriously. What do you think accounts for that contrast?

[Ava DuVernay]

Well, I think race has a lot to do with it, but also, again, I mean, they were, you know, running with a story. You know, it's running with a story that was. That was of great interest to the city. And they used the cipher of this kind of pristine white woman, to be honest with you, because we know that there were women of color who were, you know, in very horrible instances, raped and attacked that very same week that had no press coverage at all. So I can only point to race as one of the big factors, and not just race. I mean, this was a white woman who was somebody. You know what I mean? She was accomplished, she was educated. She was well liked. The journalist said to me, she was perfect. She was part of a perfect story.

[Jelani Cobb]

Has anyone from the nypd, a prosecutor's office, apologized?

[Ava DuVernay]

No, they've never said, oh, yeah, that was wrong. They just say that Matias Reyes, who was the man who actually committed the rape, was the sixth guy. It should have been Central Park 6.

[Jelani Cobb]

But there's something about that that strikes me as outrageous, because you think this was a person who had a track record of sexual assault. His M.O. was to act alone. He subsequently committed other sexual assaults alone. And in the midst of this, the prosecution's argument is that he then collaborated in this horrific assault with five young men whom he did not know at all, and he was the only person who was not captured. Right, that's the argument.

[Ava DuVernay]

That's the argument. That's the argument for people who are actually, you know, teaching law and writing books and speaking around the country as experts and law.

[Jelani Cobb]

You're saying that the prosecutors have kind of gone on to do these other things?

[Ava DuVernay]

Yes, yes, they've gone on to do all these things. One's a law professor, one's a crime novelist, considered both to be experts in their field. And yes, that's what they contend. And no one involved in any major role in this has ever said that they were wrong, that they're sorry, that there might have been an error, that they made a mistake. Sometimes you have to call a lie a lie. This whole thing was built on a lie. It was revealed to be a lie. These men have been exonerated. That's why I don't call them the Central Park Five. I call them the. The Exonerated Five. That's not a good title for a movie. So we change it to when they see Us. But they're not the Central Park Five, you know, they're Corey, Yusuf, Antron, Kevin and Raymond. And they are they were boys with dreams, with families, with memory that we wanted to honor and recognize in this piece.

[Narrator/Host]

Filmmaker Ava DuVernay, she spoke with the New Yorker's Jelani Cobb. When They See Us has just been released on Netflix. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Summer has more or less arrived, and so to close the show, we'll turn to someone who took the most profound satisfaction in just being outdoors, the late poet Mary Oliver. Oliver found meaning in the smallest details of the natural world, from geese to crabs to insects to her own dogs. And she turned to animals and to wildness for inspiration. And that close attention to nature made Mary Oliver one of the most beloved poets of our time. Here's Mary Oliver reading from the summer day in 2012 at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.

[Mary Oliver]

Who made the world? Who made the swan and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean, the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down, who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes? Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open and floats away. I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

[Narrator/Host]

Mary Oliver died in January at 83. Not long ago, a big volume of her poetry was published called Devotions that selects for more than 50 years of her work. Ruth Franklin wrote about the book for the New Yorker. Here's Franklin speaking in 2018 with David Haglund, the features editor of New Yorker.com Ruth, I'm curious.

[Ruth Franklin]

When did you first read Mary Oliver's work? And do you remember whether you liked her work right away or did it take a while?

[David Haglund]

You know, I don't have a distinct memory of the first time. I did have a boyfriend in college who was a big fan of Mary Oliver and pressed her on me. So I'm suspecting That must have been it. You know, I've always been sort of an on and off reader of poetry. Sometimes I go through phases where I'm in the mood for it and others where poetry in general speaks to me less. I did always respond to just the directness of her approach. It feels so immediate and sort of focused on you as the reader.

[Ruth Franklin]

It's so unguarded. I think there's something. And I admit that for me, sometimes it sort of takes me aback. It's not what I'm used to with poetry. One of my favorite poets is Wallace Stevens, who once said that poetry should resist the intelligence almost successful. Which is just not at all her approach, I don't think.

[David Haglund]

Yeah, in general. I think that is what makes her work so almost universally appealing. Is that, you know, you don't feel like you need to have a degree in poetry in order to understand Mary Oliver.

[Ruth Franklin]

Although that's also maybe why she hasn't gotten the critical acclaim that you might expect from a writer who's won. She has won some very big prizes and is enormously popular as poets go. But there is a kind of looking down one's nose at her from some critics, maybe. I don't know if you'd put it away.

[Ava DuVernay]

Definitely.

[David Haglund]

You know, I think of them as sort of more academic poetry critics, you know, who are more interested in a kind of hermetic, almost coded kind of poetry.

[Ruth Franklin]

Do you think that the. She's very frank about her interest in God and in prayer. And, you know, for a particular kind of secular critic, maybe that's off putting as well.

[David Haglund]

Yeah, I think it probably is. I mean, as in the poem we just heard this Summer Day. There's this, you know, sort of introduction to the poem where we have a nature scene with a grasshopper. One nice detail that I read somewhere in an article about her, I don't remember where now, is that there was a real grasshopper that she used as a model, as it were, for that poem. The grasshopper was eating a slice of birthday cake at a picnic, I think. And it seemed important to her, as she explained it, that the grasshopper was in fact a real grasshopper drawn from the natural world. So we have this little scene and then there's an abrupt switch in the middle of the poem. And suddenly she starts talking about prayer. But of course, you know, if you're familiar with Mary Oliver, you know that that's in the background more or less all the time.

[Ruth Franklin]

The summer day is typical of her work in another way. In that it's largely about the natural world. And at least for me, living in New York City, it does feel like a window into a kind of side of life that I maybe don't get to enjoy as often as I would. And I wonder if to some extent, people kind of feel like opening a. A collection of Mary Oliver is like taking a walk outside.

[David Remnick]

Mm.

[Ava DuVernay]

Yeah.

[David Haglund]

You know, I think if Mary Oliver were here with us, she would probably scold you for saying that because, of course, it's quite possible to experience the natural world even here in New York City. You know, you can go to Central park in the migration season and see all the different waterfowl and warblers and everything passing through. But. But you're right. And I think that that's something her poetry kind of exhorts the reader to do, is to find, you know, find that moment of beauty in nature. If it's, you know, if we can call it the sublime or the spiritual or just something we might not have noticed, you know, what does she say? Attention is the beginning of devotion. That her poetic method as she presents it is very much about that kind of directed attention which presumably one could experience anywhere.

[Ruth Franklin]

Let's give the last word to Mary Oliver. Here she is reading another one of her poems, Mornings at Blackwater.

[Mary Oliver]

For years, every morning I drank from Blackwater Pond. It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt, the feet of ducks. And always it assuaged me from the dry bowl of the very far past. What I want to say is that the past is the past and the present is what your life is, and you are capable of choosing what that will be. Darling citizen, so come to the pond or the river of your imagination or the harbor of your longing, and put your lips to the world and live your life.

[Narrator/Host]

Mary Oliver reading Mornings at Blackwater. The poem appears in the new collection Devotions. Oliver died just this past January and we heard Ruth Franklin and the New Yorker's David Hagland talking about her work. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Thanks for listening today and please join us next time.

[David Remnick]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Toon Yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. Our team includes Alex Barron, Emily Botin, Ave Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, Kalalea, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Louis Mitchell, Sarah Nix and Stephen Valentino, with help from Emily Mann and Mang Fei Chen. The New Yorker Radio hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.