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 pick 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 Dobby Gibson, who's the author of five poetry collections, including most recently, Hold Everything.

He's also the recipient of fellowships from the Lannin Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board.

Dobby, welcome. Thanks for joining me. Thanks, Kevin. Glad to be here.

So the first poem you've chosen to read is, I have slept in many places for years on

mattresses that entered by Diane Seuss. Tell us, what was it about this poem that caught your

attention when you were looking through the archive? Well, for me, any Diane Seuss poem is an event that I get very excited about.

This particular poem comes from her book, Frank Sonnets, which won the Pulitzer Prize.

A few years ago, and for me, is just one of the most exciting books of poems of the past

couple decades.

So it was a super quick choice, and I'm excited to talk about it with you.

Well, why don't we hear the poem? This is Dobby Gibson reading. I have slept in many places

for years on mattresses that entered by Diane Seuss. I have slept in many places for years on

mattresses that entered. I have slept in many places for years on mattresses that entered. I have slept in many places for years

on mattresses that entered my life via nothing but luck. As a child on wet sheets, I could not contain

myself. As a teen on the bed where my father ate his last pomegranate, among crickets and chicken bones and

ditches, in the bare grass on the lavish grounds of a crumbling castle, in a flapping German circus

tent, in a lean-to, my head on the belly of a sick calf, in a terrible darkness where a shrew tried to stay afloat in a bucket of

well water, in a blue belfry, on a pink couch being eaten from the inside by field mice, on bare floorboards

...