Poetry Foundation
106 episodes listed below
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The Poetry Magazine Podcast takes listeners on an audio journey into and beyond the pages of Poetry. Hear poets share the surprises, confusions, and desires that keep them writing. Produced by Rachel James.
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A layered conversation about lineage, language, and poetry as something continually remade.
The discussion follows Kimiko Hahn across family, form, gender, and the long stretch of her writing life. It is strongest when it moves from grandmothers and grandchildren to the Heian women writers she admires, then into language, body, and disturbance.
A thoughtful poetry conversation that turns crestfallenness into a precise meditation on desire, ancestry, and place.
Kiki Petrosino's conversation with Cindy treats crestfallenness as more than a passing feeling; it opens onto desire, identity, ancestry, and place.
Two classical-education teachers slow-read novels like Jane Eyre, chapter by chapter.
Book talk with room to wander.
Poet Mei-mei Berssenbrugge discusses her life and creative process, from childhood poetic awakenings to solitary inspiration in New Mexico, using plant metaphors to explore mind, growth, and climate grief, culminating in a guided exercise for listeners.
Edward Salem reflects on a painting titled 'What is Beyond So What?' and uses it as a framework for exploring his personal and political journey.
Kiki Petrosino discusses her Poetry Magazine essay “On Crestfallenness, Pilgrim, Not a Tractor,” moving from envy, disappointment, and the pressure of “not measuring up” to her writing practice.
Kimiko Hahn discusses her poetic journey, including winning the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, mentoring her younger self through revision, and exploring themes like ghost forests, form, and generational relationships.
Chilean-born writer Amelia Bande reflects on living with scleroderma as both literal and metaphorical entrapment, connecting her autoimmune illness to growing up under Pinochet's dictatorship.
Pamela Sneed discusses her journey from isolated childhood in Massachusetts to becoming a poet activist in New York.
Cathy Park Hong describes Tala Madani's 'Shit Mom' paintings as the light-bulb link between her prose book and her poems.
Kevin Young tells Cindy Juyoung Ok that Denise Levertov's line "the page is a score" shaped how he treats line breaks as both visual and sonic, and he reads "The Stare," set at Keats's death room above the Spanish steps.
Hofmann says arts felt better than real life, and that as a child he imagined he would have found his place in history.
Torrin Greathouse calls spy games a metaphor for being closeted and autistic: "The page is the loudest I ever get to be."
Douglas Kearney and Cindy Juyoung Ok examine spite through Scrabble, childhood games, and the emotional limits of friendship.
Elisa Gabbert defends self-pity as a deliberate form of self-care that can make crying and emotional regression feel useful.