Poetry as a Cistern for Love and Loss

Summary

The New Yorker Radio Hour

Episode: Poetry as a Cistern for Love and Loss

Date: December 16, 2025
Host: David Remnick
Guest: Gabriel Calvo Caressi (Poet)
Interviewer: Kevin Young (New Yorker Poetry Editor)

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Overview:

This episode delves into the poetry of Gabriel Calvo Caressi, whose collection The New Economy was a National Book Award finalist. Through a vibrant and candid conversation with poetry editor Kevin Young, Calvo Caressi discusses their poetic forms, the recurring motif of the cistern as a source of echo and memory, and the intimate intersections of love, loss, and survival that run through their work. The episode highlights how poetry can be both a vessel for communal memory and a means of personal renewal—what Calvo Caressi describes as "a cistern for love and loss." The discussion includes moving readings of Calvo Caressi’s poems and reflections on family, community, and the truths poetry can hold.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Concept Behind The New Economy

• Origins of the Title
  • The New Economy title is not a reference to economics but the "cost" of living, loving, and community.
  • Caressi describes an "economy of kindness, love, and generative hunger."
  • Quote:

    "This book is so much about what it is to reach out, what it is to feast with people, what it is to protect people, and what it is to do a lot of times under real duress, which I think...Like the stock market, we are rising and falling." — Gabriel Calvo Caressi [01:40]

• Connection Across Books
  • Recurring ideas and language connect Calvo Caressi’s books—“echoes and reverberations.”
  • Inspired by jazz and opera, they see recurring phrases as musical riffs threading through their work and life.
  • Quote:

    "What if I said I love you 75 times and every time it sounded a little different?...Or can I have that donut? Which is also something that might show up in the poems." — Gabriel Calvo Caressi [03:04]

Crafting Poetic Voice and Rhythm

• Much of Calvo Caressi’s poetry begins in movement—walking is generative for them due to a neurological condition affecting balance, making the act of walking both literal and metaphorical for their art.
• Quote:

  "Once I could start walking, I really didn't stop. And walking is still though a thing that's kind of a challenge for me. Balance is tough for me. But this act of walking, moving...I'm also, like, a professional daydreamer." — Gabriel Calvo Caressi [04:40]

The "Cistern" Form

• Inspiration and Meaning
  • Inspired by Pauline Oliveros's Deep Listening Project, which involved musicians playing in a giant cistern to create a unified sound from diverse echoes.
  • The cistern becomes a symbol for memory, community, and resonance in Caressi’s work.
  • Quote:

    "I'm the most recent top of the cistern of my family. I'm the most recent top of the cistern of my own experience...I'm just, like, down in the cistern also speaking my piece. And we're all coming together, and at some point, someone's gonna stand on the top and they're gonna hear us all." — Gabriel Calvo Caressi [07:11]

Reading: "Hammond B3 Organ Cistern"

• Notable Passages & Reflection
  • The poem is a candid meditation on survival, gratitude, and days when the narrator chooses to live.
  • Quote:

    "The days I don't want to kill myself are extraordinary...Bring the band out on the stoop. Hallelujah." — Gabriel Calvo Caressi [09:39–11:37]

• On Writing About Survival & Suicidal Thoughts
  • Caressi shares the honesty of discussing difficult subjects, treating past silence about suicide as another "closet" to emerge from.
  • Quote:

    "That wasn’t—being able to talk about that was like another closet I was in. I've lived in lots of closets in my life, and that was maybe the deepest." — Gabriel Calvo Caressi [13:22]

Loss, Family, and Generational Reflection

• Writing About Their Mother’s Death
  • The poet’s mother died by suicide at 42; Caressi reflects on aging beyond her, exploring loss through generational lens and social context.
  • Quote:

    "What is it when we get older than our parents were when they died?...She is definitely one of the ghosts." — Gabriel Calvo Caressi [15:06]

• Place and Community
  • Living in Durham, NC, evokes a sense of childhood, community rituals, and interconnectedness, reminding Caressi of their Connecticut roots and reinforcing themes of kinship and belonging.
  • Quote:

    "One of the reasons...I immediately felt so comfortable, was like, there were just grandmothers everywhere. And I live my life like, I'm coming...my grandmother's gonna say something to me." — Gabriel Calvo Caressi [16:24]

The "Miss Yous" Poems

• Exploring Grief and Love Through Repetition and Ritual
  • "Miss you would like to take a walk with you..."—a series of poems enacting longing, ritual, and the desire to reconnect with loved ones lost.
  • Caressi speaks about the alchemy of language and ritual in poetry as literal acts of calling and remembrance.
  • Reading excerpt:

    "Miss you would like to take a walk with you do not care if you arrive in just your skeleton...wish you would come back for a while don't even need to bring your skin sack I'll know you I know you'll know me Even though I'm bigger now Grayer I'll show you my garden..." — Gabriel Calvo Caressi [19:25–20:50]

• On Ritual and Authenticity in Poetry
  • Caressi emphasizes writing with their true voice, as anything less would not "bring the loved one back."
  • Quote:

    "If I wrote a poem asking her to come back, that didn't sound like the truth either. She wouldn't come, or when she did, I'd be grounded." — Gabriel Calvo Caressi [22:13]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On poetry as living resonance:
  "What if I'm just building a deep well here? You know? Like, what if I'm just in a deep well and someday I'm not gonna be here anymore?" — Gabriel Calvo Caressi [07:11]

• On survival and confronting stigma:
  "There should be a word for it. The days you wake up and do not want to slit your throat...If you don't know, then you're lucky. But also, you poor thing." [09:39]

• On the communal function of poetry and ritual:
  "If one wanted to do quote, like what I do here, it's about trusting your cadence, trusting the way you breathe...they can actually make something happen." [22:36]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Origin of "The New Economy" & Poetic Continuity: [01:29–04:29]
• On Poetic Process and Walking: [04:29–05:52]
• Developing the "Cistern" Poetic Form: [05:52–08:15]
• Reading and Discussion: “Hammond B3 Organ Cistern”: [09:39–11:37]
• Navigating Survival, Suicide, and Candor in Poetry: [12:18–14:10]
• Family, Loss, and Writing Past Parental Death: [15:06–16:24]
• Community, Place, and Southern Kinship: [16:24–18:20]
• Introduction and Reading of the “Miss Yous” Poems: [18:20–20:50]
• Reflections on Ritual and Authentic Voice: [21:09–23:21]

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Tone & Style

The conversation is intimate, candid, often lightly humorous, and deeply heartfelt. Kevin Young guides the discussion with the warmth and understanding of a fellow poet, inviting Calvo Caressi to reflect openly, and Caressi responds with sincerity, vulnerability, and flashes of humor even on the heaviest themes.

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Conclusion

This episode is a profound exploration of how poetry acts as a "cistern", both a vessel for personal and collective memory and a medium to echo experiences of love, loss, and resilience. Through Gabriel Calvo Caressi’s lyrical voice and Kevin Young’s thoughtful engagement, listeners are invited to contemplate the everyday economies of feeling that shape us all.

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For further reading:
Gabriel Calvo Caressi's work can be found at newyorker.com and in the anthology A Century of Poetry in the New Yorker.
The New Economy is out now and was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Transcript

[Host/Producer]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

[David Remnick]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. This year, the New Yorker published an anthology called A Century of Poetry in the New Yorker. It was all to help mark the magazine's centennial, and it was put together by our poetry editor, Kevin Young. The book includes works from the early days of Dorothy Parker and moves onward and onward to poems we printed in just the past few years and months. One of those poets is Gabriel Calvo Caressi. Their recent collection called the New Economy, was a finalist for the National Book Award this year. And Calvo Caressi sat down recently to talk about it with Kevin Young. And heads up that some of Calvo Caressi's work addresses suicide. And this is going to come up in our conversation as well.

[Kevin Young]

I was so excited about the opportunity to talk with Gabrielle because they're such a force on the page in person, and you can hear in their poetry this kind of sense of both community and individuality, this sorrow and this joy, this idea of ecstasy and expectation. But it's flecked with real human trial and tribulation, with everyday pain, but also sort of extraordinary moments. Can we start today with the title of your new book, the New Economy?

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

Yeah.

[Kevin Young]

Can you tell us where that title came from? Because it's not a book about the stock market or inflation, but it is about, you know, what we pay, what the cost of things are in some sense. Tell us about it.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's interesting. I wrote a poem in my last book, Rocket Fantastic, called Praise House, the New Economy. And, you know, like, sometimes I imagine you have this, too. You get a kind of phrase or an idea in your mind, and it just keeps living with you. And that poem thinks a lot about. What is it to just think of, like, kindness and love and generative hunger and pleasure as a kind of economy in and of itself. And then when I was sort of beginning to build this book and make these poems, I thought, you know, I think the title of this thing that I'm making, whether it's a book or whatever it is, I think I like this idea of the New Economy still. I like this idea of. This book is so much about neighbors. This book is so much about what it is to reach out, what it is to feast with people, what it is to protect people, and what it is to do a lot of times under real duress, which I think, you know, like. Like the stock market, we are rising and falling and Often we are doing those things because of forces outside of ourselves that we are at least told we cannot control. And maybe the book is a little bit about that too. Maybe we can control them more than we think.

[Kevin Young]

Are your books often connected in this way? Do you find like there's crossover connection?

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

Yeah, I think certainly I would say now they are. I mean, although I think in a funny way there are ways that this book, the New Economy, which is my fourth book, I can't believe it. I just turned 51 years old. Like, who knew?

[Kevin Young]

Congratulations.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

Thank you. In some ways this book reminds me very much of my first book in ways that I can't even like totally articulate. But coming back to a lot of these questions about coming home, what it is to come home. But more recently in a lot of ways, because I am interested in things like jazz and opera, like long form music. At some point I thought to myself, not just like, why couldn't the same ideas come up? But like, why couldn't phrases, you know, why couldn't you start having like you do in jazz, like, why couldn't this just be a kind of phrase that I'm playing through the books that I'm thinking about? I say things in my day to day life, as I'm sure, like lots of people who are listening do. Like, I probably to a boring extent. I say the same things a lot of the time, but often we with different inflections, you know. And so I think that's something I actually have really started to try and do in the poems as well. What if I just sounded like myself? What if I said I love you 75 times and every time it sounded a little different? Just like we do, you know, or can I have that donut? Which is also something that might show up in the poems.

[Kevin Young]

I love that about the poems. Those echoes and reverberations that really connect. You said you often begin writing a poem on your feet, like just walking around and the poems have that kind of quality. Could you tell us about that?

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

Yeah, well, you know, I was a kid who. I did not. I have a visual and neurological condition called nystagmus. And so that affects my balance. And so I didn't walk. I mean, I didn't really walk till I was like three years old and I couldn't do stairs. I have poems about it where like, I couldn't do stairs till I was like seven and a half, eight years old. So once I could start walking, I really didn't stop. And I. And walking is still though a thing that's kind of a challenge for me. Balance is tough for me. But this, like, act of, like, walking, moving. I'm also, like, a professional daydreamer.

[Kevin Young]

Okay.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

I love the poets who are like, well, I sat down at my desk and the meter came to me, and I just. I mean, I'm just, like, dreaming all day long. And so I find few places, you know, sort of more generative and more wonderful to dream than, like, being in my fallible body, like, trying to cross the street, walking along a trail. And so that is a really big deal. A lot of times the poems start there. A lot of times my ideas start there. My hopes start there. And so it's a long time, often, before the poem actually gets to the page.

[Kevin Young]

I want to ask you about this form you've created, which I absolutely love. The Cistern.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

Yeah.

[Kevin Young]

Can you tell us about that and how that came to be and how that came to dominate this book?

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

Absolutely. You know, again, like, rooted in music to some extent. There is this extraordinary. Like, maybe we should take a break now and just for an hour, listen to Pauline Oliveros right here. Just, like, let the people really dig into it. But Pauline Oliveros, really one of the parents of electronic music, had this remarkable project called the Deep Listening Project. And she went down into the Dan Harpel Cistern and had all of these musicians playing down there. You can go listen to the Deep Listening Band sessions. And it's worth doing. And part of her idea was that you could have all of these musicians down there. And because of the resonances of that cistern, people could start playing at different times. And once you got to the top of the cistern, once you were standing on the top, though, it would all come out as a unified vision.

[Kevin Young]

Ah.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

And I thought to myself, well, like, what am I other than, you know, I'm the most recent top of the cistern of my family. I'm the most recent top of the cistern of my own experience, but also perhaps of a certain kind of experience in America, in my neighborhood. I'm part of a cistern. I'm just. I'm just, like, down in the cistern also speaking my piece. And we're all coming together, and at some point, someone's gonna stand on the top and they're gonna hear us all. So there's that, and then there's also just this idea of reverberation and echo. Kind of like this idea of phrases that come back through my books. Like, what if I'm just building a deep well here? You know? Like, what if I'm just in a deep well and someday I'm not gonna be here anymore? The funny thing is that when I was talking to Copper Canyon about this book. And my wonder, Michael Uyghurs, was like, tell me about the Cisterns. I started talking about Polly and Oliveros and the Dan Harpel Cistern. And he went, the Dan Harpel Cistern? I said, yeah. He said, I'm looking at it right now. Wow. It's right across from Copper Canyon.

[Kevin Young]

Oh, wow.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

And I guess, like, a thing with this.

[Kevin Young]

And so where does that remind our listeners where that is?

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

That is in Port Townsend, Washington. If anyone wants to come to the Dan Harpel Cistern with me. I don't have the balance to crawl down into it.

[Kevin Young]

And, like, how big must it be?

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

It's. Oh, my gosh, I wish we could pull it up. Well, it's on the COVID This is just part of it.

[Kevin Young]

Oh, wow. So it's a real. It's almost like a mineshaft. It's more than a well.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

It's a vast, vast. I think they used it for water. I think it's like a vast container. And they do bring, like, musicians down and stuff. Michael was like, maybe we can get you down there. But then I saw the picture of the rickety ladder, and I was like, okay, but only on the last day of my life. But my dream is that. And anyone who wants to join, we all, like people go down in the streets.

[Kevin Young]

We descend in the. In order to ascend.

[Host/Producer]

Yeah.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

And then we also, like, if the whole book could be read in the cistern.

[Kevin Young]

Wow.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

And then some of us could sit on top and, like, listen. I mean, that'd be so rad.

[Kevin Young]

Well, I think you've achieved that just in the poems themselves. This, would you say, a vast sort of area that you've created that these voices, mostly yours. But I feel like there's others. And yours is, you know, full of multitudes. Well, I wanna hear a cistern. Can I. Have you read the first poem in the book, which is the one the New Yorker published in 2018? Hammond B3 organ cistern.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

The days I don't want to kill myself are extraordinary. Deep base. All the people in the streets waiting for their high fives and leaping. I mean, leaping when they see me. I am the sun filled God of love. Or at least an optimistic under secretary. There should be a word for it. The days you wake up and do not want to slit your throat. Money in the bank. Enough for an iced green tea every weekday And Saturday and Sunday. It's like being in the armpit of a Hammond B3 organ. Just reeks of gratitude and funk. The funk of ages. I am not going to ruin my love's life today. It's like the time I said yes to gray sneakers. But then the salesman said, wait, and they are out of the back room like the bakery's first biscuits. Bright blue kicks, iridescent, like a scarab. Oh, who am I kidding? It was nothing like a scarab. It was like bright blue fucking sneakers. I did not want to die that day. Oh, my God. Why don't we talk about it? How good it feels. And if you don't know, then you're lucky. But also, you poor thing. Bring the band out on the stoop Let the whole neighborhood here. Come on, everybody say it with me nice and slow. No pills, no cliff, no brains on the floor. Bring the bass back. No rope, no hoes. Not today, Satan. Every day I wake up with my good fortune and news of my demise. Don't keep it from me. Why don't we have a name for it? Bring the bass back. Bring the band out on the stoop. Hallelujah.

[Kevin Young]

So great to hear that. Thank you so much.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

Thank you.

[Kevin Young]

M&B3 organ cistern. That was also gathered in the century of poetry in the New Yorker Anthology, 1925-2025. And it was so great to run that, to see that and hearing it again. I'm struck by so many lines in it. I'm not going to ruin my love's life today or every day I wake up with my good fortune. Line break. And news of my demise. Don't keep it from me. How do you balance this candor, this ability to talk about these difficult things. Death, suicide, loss. Things that often, as you say, why don't we talk about it?

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

Yeah.

[Kevin Young]

And how do you balance that good fortune with news of my demise?

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

Yeah. You know, I think this is something I have learned, or I should say, I am learning to do in my life and in my poems in real time. And I'm allowing myself to sound like myself doing that. Right. In terms of, like. I've just started using periods in different ways in the line, right? Like, I am not going to ruin my love's life today. Period. Right. As opposed to, like, before, I would've been like, I am not going to ruin my love's life today. Like a train surging through the hillsides of Scandinavia.

[Kevin Young]

Right.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

You kept going, like, there's something about. This is these days that we have. I mean, I imagine people who are listening, there are people like me who some days, like, it is just very hard to be alive.

[Kevin Young]

Sure.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

And that wasn't sort of being able to talk about that was like another closet I was in. I've lived in lots of closets in my life, and that was maybe the deepest. Like, that was one where I was really like swimming through the mothballs to get out of it because I thought this is something we can't talk about. And the truth is we can. And I can talk about the fact that there are days where it's very difficult to be alive. And also sometimes just like hearing this piece of music or just smelling the air in a certain way, all of a sudden, it doesn't change the fact that I'm devastated. And also, like, oh, here I am, exclamation point.

[David Remnick]

Gabriele Calvo Caressi speaking with the New Yorker's poetry editor, Kevin Young. More in a moment.

[Kevin Young]

On this week's on the Media, Netflix is vying with Paramount to buy Warner Brothers, which owns, among many other things, cnn. The president may or may not have a finger on the scale.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

I'm not involved in that. I will be probably involved, maybe involved in the decision. It depends. I think it's imperative that CNN be sold.

[Kevin Young]

Don't miss this week's on the Media from wnyc. Find on the Media wherever you get your podcasts. I know you've written about your mother's death from suicide, and I wonder if you is that something you're still writing about in this book?

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

Oh, yeah. I think I will probably never stop writing about it. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that this book is full of her. She is definitely one of the ghosts. Also, I think, what is it when we get older than our parents were when they died? You know, I'm significantly she died at like 42 years old. I'm 51. Like, I'm older.

[Kevin Young]

Right.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

I wrote about her a ton in my other books. I was still younger than her. I came to certain kinds of understanding as I approached her age. But it's wild to look back at my mother as like this young woman. Like this young woman who was in a lot of pain and who was also like a poor mentally ill person in the jaws of the Reagan era. That is a very powerful thing. And I think this book tries to also look at that.

[Kevin Young]

Right. Well, I think it's a book in some ways about survival and about triumph. As we hear, I wonder about place and thinking about moving there to North Carolina. How does it shape your Work.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

I gotta say, I love the South. And that is. I think a lot of people might hear that and say, what? You know, you're a trans lesbian. Like, what. Where I live in the south, in Durham, or old East Durham, North Carolina, first of all, like, it's tobacco country. And where I grew up in central Connecticut was actually tobacco. We grew broadleaf. It was like, Connecticut was, like, the huge tobacco part of the country besides North Carolina. Also, like, the first town I lived in, Middle Haddam, Connecticut, which is part of East Hampton, Connecticut, with my grandparents. I just, like, everybody knew everyone, and everyone was in your business, like, in a great way. And I mean, I'm sure difficult ways, too. But, like, every. The whole town had dinner together four times a year. And also. And I do say this. And this is like the poems. Like, if I walked to the post office and I did not say hello to everybody there. By the time I got home, my grandmother would be, like, standing outside being like, Mrs. So and so called. She said, you must not be feeling well. That is not different than living in a neighborhood in North Carolina. And I. One of the reasons, I think when we got there, I immediately felt so comfortable, was like, there were just grandmothers everywhere. And I live my life like, I'm coming. Like, my grandmother's gonna say something to me. I had a lot of people talking to me about my garden. I had a lot of people being like, why are you doing it that way? And I was like, I am in heaven.

[Kevin Young]

And you were fine with that? Yeah.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

It turns out it's my absolute pocket. But I would say the south actually feels extremely familiar to me in many ways. It's also and so that I think brought up a sense of childhood in my poems again, like, a sense of being in community, going to church, like, having people, like, really asking me questions about myself and, like, caring.

[Kevin Young]

Well, tell us about the Miss yous poems. We have the one Miss yous would love to grab that chilled tofu that we love. And also Miss yous would like to take a walk with you.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

Yeah. We were deep in Covid. I had lost both my friend Jenny Tonpahote and Randall Keenan. And I started to think about. And I'm always thinking about my grandmother. I mean, my mother is in my poems, but my grandmother is like, oh, always in my poems. And I started thinking, gosh, like, I miss. I just miss them so much. And then I started thinking about that phrase, oh, yeah, missing. I miss you. I miss you. I wish you. I wish you. And I thought to myself, gosh like, what would it be if I could just say that enough. And in terms of thinking about sort of the craft of poetics, could I make it specific enough? Could I build the scene enough that, like, actually the portal would open and we'd just, like, be there together for a minute? Maybe we could open the portal.

[Kevin Young]

Let's do it.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

Miss you would like to take a walk with you do not care if you arrive in just your skeleton Would love to take a walk with you Miss you would love to make you shrimp saganaki like you used to make me when you were alive. Love to feed you Sit over steaming bowls of pilaf little roasted tomatoes covered in pepper and nutmeg. Ms. You would love to walk to the post office with you Bring the ghost dog. We'll walk past the waterfall and you can tell me about the after wish you wish you would come back for a while don't even need to bring your skin sack I'll know you I know you'll know me Even though I'm bigger now Grayer I'll show you my garden I'd like to hop in the leaf pile you raked but if you want to jump in I'll rake it for you Miss you standing looking out at the river with your rake in your hand Miss you in your puffy blue jacket they're hip now. I can bring you a new one if you'll only come by. No, I told you it was okay to go. No, I told you it was okay to leave me. Why'd you believe me? You always believed me. Wish you would come back so we could talk about truth. Ms. You wish you would walk through my door Stare out from the mirror Come through the pipes.

[Kevin Young]

I love the end of that poem, Come through the Pipes. The idea that I started thinking again of an organ, you know, not a Hammond B3 organ, but a sort of large organ in a church or movie house. And that kind of idea, it's music. It feels. How does it sound to you now?

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

You know, I love reading those poems, I have to say. Like, those two, particularly that last one. Maybe it is because that is a poem that really, like, has kind of. It has entered a stream of consciousness where, like, it's not about necessarily, like, performing it. And people love it. It's actually that it is. And this is something. I think, that for many of us poets, it's what we want, right? Like, it is enacting its form in the world. Like, that is a poem that I made that when I go out in the world, people know that poem, but they know that poem because there's a cadence of it that I think rings true to them, that feels true in their bodies. They can do it too. We can do it together. I mean, it. Like, everyone should just give it a shot, see what happens. And it also sounds really like me. Like, it really sounds like I can't. It cannot be artifice to ask my grandmother to come back.

[Kevin Young]

No, bring the ghost dog.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

Yeah.

[Kevin Young]

This isn't a yeah. And it isn't easy, I guess. I think that's the other thing that it's a. I mean, it might be something everyone can do, but the way you do it, you manage to combine all those themes that we've touched on. It isn't just come back to me privately. It's like, let's do the thing we used to do together. Let's enter the ritual as you open the portal, as you said.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

Yeah, let's open the portal. It's like, let's hit the gong and see what happens. Like, if one wanted to do quote, like what I do here, it's about trusting your cadence, trusting the way you breathe, trusting that the things you see in the world and the way you put them together on a page are like alchemical. Like they can actually make something happen. And this poem does, like. Yeah. My grandmother was like the one person who always knew if I wasn't telling the truth. So if I wrote a poem asking her to come back, that didn't sound like the truth either. She wouldn't come, or when she did, I'd be grounded. Like I'm 51.

[Kevin Young]

Well, I don't think you're grounded. You've managed to make such a beautiful thing and a beautiful book. Thank you, New Economy.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

It's moving being here together. And hey, I just thank everybody here and thank everyone for listening.

[David Remnick]

Gabriel Calvo Caressi's book the New Economy was a finalist for the National Book Award this year and you can read some of their [e-mail] youm can also subscribe, of course, to the New Yorker there as well. New yorker.com Kevin Young is our poetry editor and I'm David Remnick. That's our program for this week. Thanks so much for listening. See you next time.

[Host/Producer]

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 Tune Yards with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul and Ursula Sommer. With guidance from Emily Bottin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barge, Victor Guan and Alejandra Deckett. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Tsurina Endowment Fund. It's one of Britain's most notorious crimes, the killing of a wealthy family at Whitehouse Farm. But I got a tip that the story of this famous case might be all wrong.

[Kevin Young]

I know there's going to be a twist one day, a massive twist.

[Gabriel Calvo Caressi]

At every level of the criminal justice system, there's been a cover up in this case.

[Host/Producer]

I'm Heidi Blake. Blood Relatives is a new series from in the Dark and the New Yorker. Find it now in the in the Dark podcast feedback.