Kevin Young
Appearances
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
I more know that annually about 48,000 come in. They're shorter than the story. 48,000 poems. Let's say 40, 40.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
A hundred a year, yeah. So we do read them, but it is, you know, a slightly smaller group of people reading and, you know, we have a lot shorter. Yeah, but, you know, they'll send five. They won't send just one. So, you know, I once talked to Alice Quinn about this years ago when I was, you know, just sending to the New Yorker. And she said, you know, I would feel weird if we had less.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Happy anniversary.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
I think you might eclipse us. I think we're at 13,500 or something like that. Wow.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Yeah, I remember vividly reading it and I still have my copy. And it's very neatly underlined in ink, which I wouldn't do now. I think I'm a pencil guy mostly. But, you know, just to see like James Dickies Falling, for instance, which is sort of this bravura piece. It's pages and pages. I'm not sure we would even run something as long as that. But to see it. I would hope that we would.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Okay, well, you've heard it, folks. You've heard it, folks. Yeah. It was actually kind of surprising when you asked me, you know, to do this. I think my first response was, I've only wanted to do this since I was 15, you know, like I've been thinking about, you know, this idea. And so it was like kind of a dream come true.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
And I pulled the book off the shelf and saw my underlines and was so excited. And then I realized there's not one person of color in that whole book.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
But, you know, 1999, that's a long time.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
It was missing a lot of opportunities for the range of American poetry. And it wasn't just African American poets. It's missing Asian poetry. It's missing the long tradition of Asian poetry or African poetry. It doesn't include that in translation even.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
An Anthology, we have the advantage of looking back and selecting and saying, well, that's obvious, as Debra is saying, but it isn't always in the process. And I actually, what is interesting to me, is I haven't gone through the archive and figured out, is it people didn't send? Because there is a kind of level of, you know, if it's not welcoming, why would you send your poem there?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Right, exactly. The New York school often until then Ashbury's in and then he was in a lot, you know. And so that's what's interesting is it isn't one sort of taste only. But, you know, you have someone like Sister Sonia Sanchez, a wonderful poet. She was taught by Louise Bogan, you know, and that – Ich war gestern bei der New York Public Library.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Einer der Archivisten zeigte mir eine Zusammenarbeit zwischen der Fiktionsabteilung und Jerry Salinger, J.D. Salinger.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
I mean, I mostly think that. But I think the really funny, you know, like Dorothy Parker feels very modern and crisp. And sometimes what you're encountering, in my opinion, is a generic kind of of-the-time humor. Like, you know, at a smoker, you know, in the 50s that, you know, was a hilarious, you know. Golf-Joke, you know, it doesn't really resonate. Was that an equivalent to a New Yorker poem?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Yeah, I mean, I think, especially the 20s, a kind of rhyming, clever poem, quatrains, no doubt, that, you know, comes to a clever conclusion, usually the opposite of what you might have thought, you know, so there's a kind of like, I like going out, but I sure like staying home, or... Also, wenn nur, es ist einfach so etwas wie das. Aber auch, du hast viele leichte Versen gesehen.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Ogden, Nash und so weiter.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Es ist so lustig mit Sprache.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
They don't write it this much. Why? I think I, well, I have Auden's view of light verse. He edited an Oxford anthology of light verse. And one of the things he talks about, he includes the blues in there. And one of the things I think is so clever about that is he has this broad view of light verse as a kind of musical.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
What's interesting about looking back then, like there's a lot of, you know, Harlem Renaissance poets who were very formal and could have easily fit in those pages. And so that's why it's a little surprising.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Yeah, I wanted to kind of give that sense of the time period and move from the 20s and I kind of grouped these decades together, especially at the beginning. But I thought if you just march through it, you'd have a lot of pages of things that might, you know, not talk to each other in the same way as if you think about theme.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
And the other anthologies, the previous New Yorker ones, were thematic in different ways or alphabetical. I think the 69 one is my title. It's crazy. You don't know where to navigate this thing. So instead I said, well, what about if it's like a day and so it starts with the morning, a morning bell and then, you know, has a lunch break and then it has an after work drink and goes like that.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Yeah, this is Try to Praise the Mutilated World by Adam Zagievsky. And it appears in the September 17th issue, which, as you know, was the issue right after September 11th, 2001. And to be just a week after September 11th.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
It had to start the anthology. There was no way you couldn't sort of frame our current moment and looking back without that iconic issue and this iconic poem. So this is Try to Praise the Mutilated World by Adam Zagajewski. Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June's long days. And wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the mutilated world. You watched the stylish yachts and ships. One of them had a long trip ahead of it, while salty oblivion awaited others. You've seen the refugees heading nowhere. You've heard the executioners sing joyfully. You should praise the mutilated world.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
Remember the moments when we were together in a white room and the curtain fluttered. Return in thought to the concert where music flared. You gathered acorns in the park in autumn and leaves eddied over the earth's scars. Praise the mutilated world and the grey feather a thrush lost and the gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
But, you know, I'm thinking about this just now because we've had the fires in California and we just ran a fire poem the very week. It came in literally the day or a few days after and we were able to run it. You know, that poem is not in the anthology, but there are a number of poems about COVID and pandemic and what 2020 was like and the murder of George Floyd.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The New Yorker Celebrates a Hundred Years as a Poetry and Fiction Tastemaker
I mean, these are things poetry can do and the magazine can do better than anyone and run a week later.