You're listening to the New Yorker Poetry Podcast.

I'm Kevin Young, poetry editor of the New Yorker magazine.

On this program, we ask poets to pick a poem from the New Yorker Archive to read and discuss.

Then they read a poem of their own that's appeared in the magazine.

My guest today is Arthur Z.

Arthur has received the Land and Literary Award,

the Jackson Poetry Prize, and in 2019,

the National Book Award and Poetry.

Welcome, Arthur.

Thanks so much for being here.

Thank you for inviting me.

So the poem you've chosen to read

is the problem of describing trees by Robert Haas.

What was it about this poem that drew your attention

when you were looking over the archive? I wanted to choose a poem that would be a nice pairing

with the poem of my own that I'm going to read later in the program. And I love the compression

to this poem of Bob Haas's and also how it appears to be about nature, but then it expands

and it ends up talking about language, and then it ends up talking about poetry and art, and it keeps

opening up. So that's one of the things I really admire. Well, why don't we listen to the poem?

Here's Arthur Z, reading The Problem of Describing Trees by Robert

Haas. The problem of describing trees. The aspen glitters in the wind, and that delights us. The leaf flutters, turning,

because that motion in the heat of August

...