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 April Bernard.

She's the author of two novels and six poetry collections, including Blackbird Bye Bye, which

won the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets and The World Behind the World,

which was published in 2023. She's a professor of English and creative writing at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.

April, welcome.

Thanks for joining me.

Nice to be here.

So the first poem you've chosen to read is A Worldly Country by John Ashbury.

What was it about this poem that caught your attention when you were looking through the archives? Well, I love Ashbury. What was it about this poem that caught your attention when you were

looking through the archives? Well, I love Ashbury anyway. I love the way that he's so hard to

understand, but when you're in the middle of his poem, it makes perfect sense, even if you couldn't

possibly paraphrase it to anyone else. It's a particular gift he has.

And this one attracted my attention because it's both funny and deeply serious, which is

where I think is his best place, is when he's being funny and serious at the same time.

And it's in couplets, rhymed couplets, which he doesn't do a lot.

So that's fun.

Absolutely.

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