A new book of poems by Kate Baer wrestles with the realities of middle age

NPR's Book of the Day

NPR

Books, Arts

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

NPR’s Scott Detrow and poet Kate Baer share a favorite bookstore in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. They recently met there to discuss Baer’s new poetry collection How About Now, which wrestles with the realities of middle age. In today’s episode, Baer tells Detrow about navigating honesty and privacy in her work, what it’s like to share shelf space with poets like Ada Limón and Sharon Olds, and writing moments that made her hear “the angels sing.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaung. Longtime listeners of the pod will know that
0:07.4	writers will sometimes give, uh, I don't know, writerly answers to questions about craft, right?
0:13.1	Like, they'll say stuff like, oh, the story just told me where to go or the character led me to
0:18.3	that point. Sometimes I buy it. Other times I don't, but in today's
0:22.3	interview, I believe the author 100%. It's with a poet Kate Bayer, whose new collection is titled
0:28.6	How About Now, and it's different meditations on middle age. And she tells NPR Scott Detra that
0:34.6	there are two lines of poetry in this collection that when she wrote them,
0:38.6	she, quote, heard the angels sing.
0:41.1	How can you not buy that?
0:42.6	More after the break.
0:48.0	When I lived and worked in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I always loved spending time at Midtown Scholar.
0:55.5	It is one of my favorite bookstores in the world. It's a converted old theater with cozy wooden walls, several floors of books,
1:01.7	a stage, a balcony filled with little tables, and a coffee shop. Midtown Scholar is also one of
1:08.0	a poet Kate Baer's favorite bookstores. So on a rainy day last week,
1:12.0	we met there to talk. I always go to new releases first. Okay. And then I do poetry.
1:17.4	Bear is a best-selling poet who lives in central Pennsylvania. Has the way you browse a bookstore
1:22.8	changed as you've become more of an established author? I don't believe blurbs.
1:28.1	Maybe I shouldn't say that.
1:29.3	I don't believe blurbs as much because now I see how blurbs are exchanged.
1:33.9	Yeah.
1:34.4	And it's not that they're not authentic all the time.
1:38.3	It's that there are lots of networks in publishing just like in every industry.
	...

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