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 choose 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. My guest today is Amber Tamblin, who is the author of six books and the creator of the newsletter, Listening in the Dark.

She's also an acclaimed actor and director.

Amber, welcome. Thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me, Kevin.

So the first poem you've decided to read is The Dahlia's by D.D. Jackson.

What was it about this poem that caught your attention while you were looking over the archive?

I don't know. There was something about the energy. It just sort of captivated me. I actually read, you know, all of the poems from the archives.

I just thought as an experiment, I was like, I'll just, I'll just see, like, which of the first lines grab me the most?

Which is, to me, I think also what makes a great poem is sort of the entryway in.

So this one really grabbed me.

Well, let's listen to the poem.

This is Amber Tamblin, reading The Dahlia's by Dedy Jackson.

The Dahlia's.

By now the fields are overgrown.

Most ironweed and parsnip have turned black.

Even the closed cabinet doors of milkweed pods have burst open, spilling their shucked silk into the day.

I wear a coat and remember August, those nights filled with moths that like fireworks put on a show at our window, circle the lights like monks

and meditation. At every new cycle I missed the one, now gone. I am never happy and have no

excuse not to love the dying season, the growing season, the season of sleep. That is to say,

to love it while it is happening. But what of the fall Dahlias that like bodiced planets

...