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 asked poets to select poetry 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 Christian Wyman, the poet, essayist, editor, and translator,

whose honors include the 2016 Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry and the 2020

Lifetime Achievement Award for the Conference on Christianity and Literature. Chris, welcome.

Thanks for joining us. Good to see you again, Kevin.

Likewise. So you've chosen to read two short poems from the archive, far from kingdoms,

and outside, in fact, there wasn't any change, both by Patricia Cavali, and translated from

the Italian by Judith Baumel. What drew you to these particular

poems as you were perusing the archive? Oh, you know, I've long liked Patricia Cavali's poems.

I mean, I haven't known about them that long for a decade or so, but she's been very well

translated and translated by a lot of different American and English poets.

And one of the things that I love about her is that she writes about very intense things with a very deft, light touch.

And so her poems can have an almost floating feel to them.

And you hardly realize that you've been sort of stabbed as they go by you.

Let's listen to the poems. Here's Christian Wyman, reading Far from Kingdoms by Patricia Cavali,

translated by Judith Baumell.

Far from kingdoms. Far from kingdoms. Far from kingdoms.

Far from kingdoms, how steady is the room.

Come, breathe close with me,

...