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 Julia Alvarez.

She's the author of many novels, nonfiction books, children's books, and poetry collections, including, most recently, visitations.

She's received a Hispanic Heritage Award, the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Achievement in American Literature, and, in 2013, a National Medal of Arts.

She's also the subject of a PBS American Masters documentary.

Julia, welcome.

Thanks for joining me.

Well, you've been there a while.

I'm just happy to join you.

The first poem you've chosen to read is The Schoolroom on the Second Floor of the Knitting Mill by Judy Page Heitzman.

What was it that drew you to this particular poem?

Why don't we listen to the poem?

Here's Julia Alvarez reading The Schoolroom on the Second Floor of the Knitting Mill by Judy Page Heitzman.

That was The Schoolroom on the Second Floor of the Knitting Mill by Judy Page Heitzman, which was originally published in the December 2, 1991 issue of The New Yorker.

Well, you set it up for us so beautifully.

This poem is about disappointment in some way, or is it about not being seen or being seen in a way that one doesn't want to be seen?

Yeah, that's right.