Kevin Young

The many masks, I think, of the self.

Yeah.

But I wonder, too, this face of her absence now, because there is this sense of loss in the poem itself.

um maybe even more poignantly because of the i belong to myself alone and did you think of it as an elegy before you wrote it or was it did it become one later i mean it feels like it to me now i i did not think of it as an elegy but you're absolutely right i think that um

Right.

I love that this comes from your new collection, Visitations, which is so filled with these memories and is so personal.

What was it like putting that together?

I mean, you've suggested a little bit about it, but could you tell us more about that process and about returning to poetry and re-inhabiting poetry in this specific collection?

Well, I love that title, visitations.

Are these the visitations of, you know, spirits of the past, but also sort of welcome visitors?

It's been great talking with you, Julia.

Mommy at Her Vanity by Julia Alvarez, as well as Judy Page Heitzman's The Schoolroom on the Second Floor of the Knitting Mill, can be found on newyorker.com.

Judy Page Heitzman is the author of Maybe Grace.

Julia Alvarez's latest book is Visitations.

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 Monica Farrell.

She is the author of a novel and three books of poetry, including You Darling Thing, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the Believer Book Award in Poetry.