Hello, 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. My guest today is Bianca Stone, who has published several

books of poetry and poetry comics, including most recently What is Otherwise Infinite. She runs the

Ruth Stone House in Vermont, hosts the podcast, Ode and Psychie, and serves as editor-at-large for

Iterant Magazine. Welcome, Bianca. Thanks for being here. It's so good to be here, Kevin.

So the first poem you've chosen to read is Learning to Read by Franz Wright. What was it about this

poem that caught your eye? I love this poem for all the reasons that I love Franz Wright's poems,

and I was thinking about the I love Franz Wright's poems.

And I was thinking about the act of reading appearing in poems,

because it's also in my poem that we're going to talk about later.

But I love the way in this poem, as in other of Franz Wright's poems,

he's so incredibly good at holding two opposing forces at once. One is that destructive and disruptive part of ourselves, especially in our experiences,

our most early traumas and disappointments,

simultaneously uncovering these incredible aspects of being through language, which feels like

really celebratory and genuine. And this poem is about

reading. And I was thinking, I'm reading so much Gaston Bachelor right now. And I love

how Bachelard says that literature restores life to its lost possibilities.

And I feel what Wright is doing in this poem is something akin to that, or acknowledging that.

And so I immediately, I felt such a kinship and love for this poem.

Well, why don't we listen to you read the poem? This is Bianca Stone reading,

...