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 choose 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 Danika Kelly, the author of two poetry collections, and the recipient of an Anisfield-Wolf book award,

a Kave Khanin Poetry Prize, a Hurston Wright Legacy Award, and a Kate Tuft Discovery Award. A founding member of

the collective poets at the end of the world, she teaches at the University of Iowa. Danica, welcome.

Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you for having me, Kevin. I'm so excited. So the first poem you

brought with you is 100 white-sided dolphins on a summer day by Mary Oliver. What was about this poem

that caught your eye while you were looking through the archive? Well, I love Mary Oliver,

so that was the first thing. But the second thing is, I have recently seen maybe five or

600 dusky dolphins.

So this poem really spoke to a very similar experience that I had, and I felt really excited about that.

I felt held across time by Mary Oliver's delight.

Amazing.

Well, why don't we hear the poem?

This is Danica Kelly,

reading 100 white-sided dolphins on a summer day by Mary Oliver.

100 white-sided dolphins on a summer day.

One.

Fat, black, slick, galloping in the pitch of the waves, in the pearly fields of the sea.

They leap toward us.

...