Ariel Francisco Reads James Wright

The New Yorker: Poetry

The New Yorker

Arts, Wnyc, Yorker, New, Literature, Studios, Poetry, Books

4.4 • 571 Ratings

🗓️ 28 August 2019

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ariel Francisco joins Kevin Young to read "By a Lake in Minnesota," by James Wright, and his own poem "Along the East River and in the Bronx Young Men Were Singing." Francisco is a poet and translator who published his debut poetry collection, "All My Heroes Are Broke," in 2017. His new book, "A Sinking Ship is Still a Ship," is forthcoming in 2020.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're listening to the New Yorker Poetry Podcast.
0:08.7	I'm Kevin Young, poetry editor of the New Yorker magazine.
0:12.9	On this program, we invite poets to select a poem from the New Yorker archive to read and discuss.
0:18.5	Then, we ask them to read a poem of their own that's appeared in the magazine.
0:22.6	My guest today is the poet and translator, Ariel Francisco,
0:26.7	who published his debut collection,
0:28.9	All My Heroes Are Broke in 2017.
0:33.2	Welcome, Ariel.
0:33.9	Thank you for joining us.
0:35.2	Thanks for having me, man.
0:36.1	I'm really excited.
0:37.7	So I'm excited, too. The poem you've chosen to read today is James Wright's poem by a lake in Minnesota.
0:45.2	What drew you to this particular poem while you were looking through our archive?
0:48.8	Yeah, looking through the archive was just a ton of fun, so just typing in, you know, all the poets I admire and
0:54.5	looking through all the poems that they've published in The New Yorker. And I had forgotten
0:58.7	about this James Wright poem, though it is in, I think it's in the Branch Will Not Break,
1:03.8	which is one of my favorite books, but it has so many good poems that even the good ones
1:08.4	get buried amongst the other good ones. So it was like finding something familiar that I had forgotten that I really liked. So it was a joy to
1:15.8	encounter it again in the archives. Great. Let's hear it. This is Ariel Francisco, reading
1:21.6	by a lake in Minnesota by James Wright. By a lake in Minnesota.
1:29.1	Upshore from the cloud.
1:31.9	The slow wail of country twilight.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The New Yorker, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The New Yorker and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.